Couric Hails Hillary's Impact; Williams: 'If Not Her, Who and When?'

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Paying tribute to Hillary Clinton hours before her address to the Democratic National Convention, on Tuesday night CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric delivered a nearly five-minute-long review of Senator Clinton's campaign and why it came up short, though Couric ended on a laudatory note: “She did leave her mark in the history books.” Following a soundbite from former Clinton campaign operative Geoffrey Garin touting how “for the next woman who runs for President, they don't have to wonder what the model looks like. The model looks like Hillary Clinton,” Couric trumpeted: “And the party platform, where for the first time, the issue of sexism in America is raised.”

Over on the NBC Nightly News, sitting with NBC political director Chuck Todd inside the Pepsi Center to preview the upcoming speech, anchor Brian Williams rued:

And I assume she's going to talk about that glass ceiling, i.e., a woman President of these United States, which begs the question as we listen to her tonight, if not her, who and when?

Todd answered:

Brian, if John McCain does not pick a woman on his ticket, it will have been 24 years since Geraldine Ferraro's nomination. It's actually a stunning amount of time. That's a generation. I don't think any of us thought it was going to be a generation of folks before we would see another woman on the ticket. Maybe it's Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas on the Democratic side or Kay Bailey Hutchison down in Texas. She wants to run for Governor. But watch these women that run and win these governorships. We all know it's a lot easier to go from a governorship to the presidency than to the United States Senate because this is an anomaly this year that we actually have two sitting Senators on their way to, potentially on their way to the White House. Normally, there's at least one Governor in this mix.

From the end of Couric's lengthy piece on Hillary Clinton's journey to Denver:

COURIC: But she did leave her mark in the history books.

GEOFFREY GARIN, CLINTON CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST: For the next woman who runs for President, they don't have to wonder what the model looks like. The model looks like Hillary Clinton.

COURIC: And the party platform, where for the first time, the issue of sexism in America is raised.

HOWARD DEAN, DNC CHAIRMAN: There's many good things that are going to come out of Hillary Clinton's campaign, and addressing that is one of them.

COURIC: Nearly 70 percent of registered voters believe Clinton made it easier for other women to one day try for the White House, a point of pride for the candidate herself as she delivered her last, and perhaps most difficult speech, of the campaign.

HILLARY CLINTON, JUNE 7: Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it's got about 18 million cracks in it.