Friday morning, Henry Cisneros gave America's editorial cartoonists the respect they may or may not deserve but, certainly, seldom get.

The former Clinton administration HUD secretary, ex-mayor of San Antonio and tarnished political star of the U.S. Hispanic community left a meeting with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington, D.C., in order to fly a circuitous over-night route to San Antonio that got him to the city at 8 AM in time to give a speech to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. As soon as he was done, he headed back to D.C. to re-engage with the discussion of how to transfer Sen. Clinton's strong Latino support to Sen. Obama. Cisneros' willingness to go to all that trouble just to give a one-hour talk to a bunch of cartoonists demonstrated his inclination to keep a commitment, as well as his respect for John Branch, the editorial cartoonist at the Hearst-owned San Antonio Express-News.

Cisneros had some interesting things to say. He has been close to Bill and Hillary Clinton for years and still seemed a bit surprised at the result of the Democratic primaries. He, like most Hillary supporters, was blindsided by the Barack Obama phenomenon. Acknowledging that the Clinton campaign had made two huge mistakes -- one, by not competing in many caucus states and, two, by failing to have a post-Super Tuesday game plan -- he said Hillary "didn't expect to come up against a force of nature like Obama." Cisneros indicated that he had expected Obama's inexperience and race to be major impediments. Instead, Obama rode the wave of passion for change and ran a nearly flawless campaign, thus demonstrating superb management skills that Cisneros believes are proof that he can be an effective president.

Cisneros had nice things to say about John McCain, too. "I'm a great fan of the senator," Cisneros said, having worked with him during his time at HUD. McCain would be a formidable candidate in any normal election year, but Cisneros sees 2008 shaping up to be a very abnormal year in which the Democratic candidate, because of his charisma and his race, has a good shot at taking normally Republican-leaning states, such as Georgia and Virginia, and swings states, such as Michigan, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada.

Cisneros said the meetings he was involved in with Clinton and Obama were "very sobering, actually." It's very difficult giving up power, he said, and "Hillary wanted to be the nominee worse than I imagined. You could see in her face she was giving up a dream, maybe forever… It was difficult and awkward, but she handled it in a professional way."

In order to get Hispanics to come out and vote for Obama as they did for Hillary, she will need to be very visible in her support of the Democratic nominee in Hispanic communities, Cisneros said. Otherwise, many will turn to McCain who has won admiration among Latinos for his moderate position on immigration issues.