Some media commentators expected that there'd be plenty of drama at the Dems' convention last night. How subtle would Bill Clinton be in slapping down Barack Obama? How ugly would it get if Hillary supporters insisted on a roll-call vote?

Well, there was plenty of drama, but it wasn't what had been expected.

It started during the roll call, with New Hampshire - which had dramatically put Hillary Clinton back in the race during the primaries - giving Obama all of its delegates. Then a few states splitting their votes. And then Illinois yielding to New York. And New York's leaders turning to Hillary Clinton. And Clinton asking for the unanimous nomination of Obama.

McCain supporters may have found the whole thing sappy, but what a night.

In his talk, Bill Clinton was at his finest, the mean-spiritedness of the primaries gone, the empathy and urgency and brilliance back. I don't know how much of this was negotiated -and negotiations with the Clintons must have been a treat - and how much was honest support of the Clintons for Obama. But Obama couldn't have asked for more.

The way-too-mild-mannered Harry Reid zipped out one-liners about the nation's energy problem: "Oil thugs!" "Look what they've done to our planet!" "Snake oil and quackery!"

John Kerry was the man we wish we had had four years ago: "Never in modern history has an administration squandered American power so recklessly. Never has strategy been so replaced by ideology. Never has extremism so crowded out common sense and fundamental American values. Never has short-term partisan politics so depleted the strength of America's bipartisan foreign policy.... President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, not ever."

The Spielberg film. The Biden speech. Delegates dancing and cheering and crying.

What a night.

For those few hours, there was the drama of conventions of the past. And the unifying of the fractured party was such a sweet surprise that for some of us, the real import of the event didn't sink in until later in the night: Finally, officially, the country has its first African-American presidential candidate.

African-American delegates were in tears - "tears of disbelief," said a CNN commentator. South Carolina Representative James Clyburn said he thought back, during the roll call, to his own early Civil Rights activism, when he had wondered whether it would have any impact. Representative John Lewis called the moment "unbelievable, unreal."

As Lewis and others have noted in the past few hours, Obama's nomination is the result of a movement in which Civil Rights activists struggled and in which some died. Water hoses, lynchings, humiliation: all of that is part of the country's history.

Now, so is Obama's nomination.