KEY POINTS:
In the end, two Clintons lost the race against Barack Obama.
Hillary, the presumed Democratic nominee a year ago, lost her bid in a desperate, determined and, ultimately, disastrous effort to expose Mr Obama as a lesser candidate.
But also Bill, the former President, whose often harmful behaviour during Hillary's crusade did lasting damage to his reputation.
If the question about Mrs Clinton in recent weeks was "What does she want?", the question about her husband was "What in the world is he thinking?"
After he left the White House in 2001, Mr Clinton went a long way toward rescuing his reputation from the ashes of the failed impeachment proceedings against him on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
As Monica Lewinsky's famous blue dress faded into the background, Mr Clinton was remembered more for the years of American (and global) prosperity his Government was a part of. In the intervening years, having left the White House US$12 million in debt, he became a rich man, earning US$29 million in book income and US$51 million in speaking fees.
It was inevitable that when Mrs Clinton ran for President, the down-home politician in Mr Clinton would eclipse the globetrotting elder statesman. He had already made messes on the campaign trail. On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Mr Clinton all but called Mr Obama a liar over Iraq; he described Mr Obama's professed stance against the war as "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen", making him sound inconsistent when, in fact, he had been pretty consistent.
When Mr Obama's victory in the important South Carolina primary later in January was a foregone conclusion, Mr Clinton suggested Mr Obama would win there because of his skin colour, but that he was not a viable national candidate.
By the eve of the Pennsylvania primary - April 22 - his role in his wife's campaign had been downsized to protect her from anti-Bill fall-out. Still, he managed to make mischief. In a radio interview, he sought to deny that his comments in South Carolina were racially charged. What's more, he said the Obama team "played the race card on me ... you gotta go something to play the race card with me - my office is in Harlem".
The next day, a reporter asked him what he meant by saying the Obama campaign "was playing the race card". Mr Clinton was furious: "No, no, no, that's not what I said."
This past week, he was at it again, incandescent about a bitchy and gossipy 10,000-word indictment of the Clinton post-presidency in Vanity Fair.
Mr Clinton called the VF writer Todd Purdum, married to former Clinton White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers "dishonest", "slimy" and a "scumbag". (A present-day Clinton spokesman later issued a statement: "President Clinton was understandably upset about [a grossly] unfair article, but the language today was inappropriate and he wishes he had not used it.")
In legacy terms, imagine a year ago for Mr Clinton as he considered his wife's then unstoppable-looking march on the White House.
Neither had lost an election since 1980. Just entering their sixties, they had plenty of political life and good works left in them.
They've both been called "the Comeback Kid" before; they will no doubt strive for yet another political resurrection. Just imagine.
* Stryker McGuire is a Newsweek contributing editor and editor of International Quarterly, the forthcoming journal on world affairs.
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