Past and Prologue.

By NANCY GIBBS

After three quarters of a million minutes of Campaign 2008, the finale to Act 1 took just 90 min. more, but it was perfect political theater. As Barack Obama won his prize at last, the three contenders performed back-to-back, on message and in high definition, sounding like themselves--only more so. If you revere or revile any of them, Tuesday's coda reminded you why.

John McCain, speaking first in New Orleans, said he was proud to call Hillary Clinton his friend. Then he borrowed her kitchen knives and sharpened every one, attacking Obama for his naivete, inexperience and general wussiness. Obama may be young and cool, McCain said, but his ideas are "old" and "tired." It was a strong attack, but watching him deliver a set speech with a clenched grin to a partisan crowd may have made voters miss the McCain who made them feel like part of some feisty rebel band, not deckhands on the Death Star. "This was not a speechmaking contest," McCain adviser Alex Castellanos noted on CNN. "Thank God."

Clinton was next, in a Manhattan gym several stories underground, where even cell phones died. A Clinton hasn't given a concession speech since 1980, so anyone looking for an acknowledgment of defeat was hunting for teacups at the hardware store. She congratulated Obama on the race he had run without noting that he'd won it, and called every vote for her "a prayer for the nation," as though she alone could answer it.

Then came Obama in St. Paul, Minn., with his wife Michelle next to him in a violet sheath (purple = red + blue). After a carefully gracious tribute to Clinton, he went right at McCain for being a quaint fossil of the Paleolithic era before launching the race into deep space. "This is our moment," he said. "This is our time." Moments, of course, are fleeting, and he talked about this one in the way geologists talk about eons. "Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment ... when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal," he said. When he was done, voters on all sides could sigh in relief, if only because at least the first heat of this amazing race is finally over.