Bill Clinton taught us that the optimistic, positive candidate is often the one who wins, observes US News & World Report’s excellent columnist, Gloria Borger.

Yet there is little positivity in Camp Hillary right now.

On this first day of March, the mood is bleak not sunny, in the Clinton campaign. In place of Bill’s trademark optimism, she has appeared, in recent days:

• Aggravated (at the press, for being soft on Barack Obama)
• Anxious (at losing 11 straight contests going into March 4)
• Apoplectic (at Barack Obama, for daring to challenge a Democratic nomination that was supposed to be hers, and wrapped up by now)

She’s running the campaign she wanted, believing that by showing a better grasp of every issue and showing the many sides of Hillary Clinton (scolding Obama one day, praising him the next), she’d broaden her appeal and inevitably prevail.

It may still happen, but it hasn’t gone according to plan.

Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, oddly, experienced a lot of the same last summer, as the venerable front-runner left for dead.

But rather than complaining or appearing puzzled by the rise of Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee, John McCain got back on the Straight Talk Express and started over. He returned to his comfort zone and, well, you know how it went.

There doesn’t seem to be any such relief to be found for Hillary Clinton, however. She seems most relaxed playing the role of experienced, hard-working senator to whom no policy detail is unimportant, but her comfort zones have often been defined by the needs of others and by her need to keep people out.

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