NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Before the final hours of the Clinton Global Initiative, the lobby of Manhattan's Sheraton hotel was so jam-packed that it was almost impossible to move through the crowd. It wasn't easy to pick out people in the sea of the famous, the wealthy and the powerful, but they were there. Barbara Streisand. First Lady Laura Bush. Hillary Clinton. And so on.

For the last session of CGI, the idea was that everyone would sit in their groups - either poverty alleviation, religious reconciliation, global health, or global warming. I felt sorry for the volunteers, who were in effect herding cats.

"Are you religion and ethnic conflict?" a harried woman asked those of us sitting in that area. In my case, actually no. I was something much worse: press. (Which I did not confess, because it would have led to banishment from my seat - shame on me.)

It all began with a tape, or a videoconference, of Nelson Mandela, and what a way to began. Anyone who isn't awed by his presence, even when it's only on a giant TV screen, must be missing something. "Any promise made here can have a direct impact on the lives of millions across our planet for generations to come," he said. Indeed, that's the great potential of the Clinton Global Initiative.

He then turned the event over to his "dear friend former president Bill Clinton," who said that thus far, there have been 215 commitments made at CGI totaling what "my staff swears" is $7.3 billion. Applause and loud whoops from the audience.

The heads of each of the tracks then summed up their group's efforts. David Sandalow of the Brookings Institution, who led the track on global warming, suggested "making energy use a part of each employee's evaluation." Yikes! Interestingly enough, Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs said that her firm was hearing complaints that there are not yet government regulations in place. In Clinton's view, a "commitment to clean new jobs" would fix both Europe's problem with unemployment and America's problem with stagnant wages. Hmmmm.

It was all very heartening - with the exception of one dark note. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group, who headed the "religious reconciliation track" said that his group agreed that there was "no single step we could take that would make a bigger difference than resolving the Israeli/Arab crisis."

But a panel of an Israeli, a Palestinian and a Lebanese could only agree on one thing, Malley said: "Bring back President Clinton!" Whether you love Clinton or hate him, that's one thing that is never going to happen.