Remember the old saying, "'tis better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all"?

It doesn't apply to presidential politics.

In yesterday's Indiana and North Carolina primaries, the burden of proof was on Hillary Clinton. To counteract Barack Obama's indestructible lead in the pledged-delegate count, she needed to give superdelegates fresh evidence that Obama had a fatal flaw--namely by showing that the good voters of North Carolina suddenly favored her after initially favoring him.

The Clinton campaign clearly recognized this--and gave North Carolina their best shot. In the wake of Clinton's April 22 win in Pennsylvania, they dispatched top field operative Averell "Ace" Smith--the architect of her triumphs in the Texas and California primaries--to run the Tar Heel State show. Known in political circles as a guy who "always brings a gun to a knife fight," he immediately predicted that N.C. would be the "upset of the century" and launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign. Soon, Clinton herself was hyping the looming primary as "a game-changer," and polls showed that Obama's once-commanding lead had shrunk to single digits. With the state seemingly in her grasp, the former First Lady sent her secret weapon--husband and former president Bill--on his Barbecue Tour: a frenzy of old-fashioned front-porch rallies in the tiny, mostly-white hamlets of rural North Carolina, where his patented Southern charm could presumably scare up the votes needed to surprise Obama on Primary Day. "Let the commentariat lament, or laugh, about Bill being sent out into the sticks," wrote Byron York in the National Review. "For Hillary, the sticks are where the votes are."

Yesterday, I caught up with the president at Durham's North Carolina School of Math and Science for his final stop. Red in the face, with saggy eyes and a halo of mussed, overgrown white hair, he clearly "look[ed] exhausted," as one schoolteacher put it. And with good reason: in recent weeks, Bill had made 56 appearances in North Carolina, including 19 in the last three days alone. "Even when I was younger," he told a supporter on the rope line, "that would've been a lot." Still, he was in fine form. Approached by a pregnant woman, he touched her bulging belly and asked when the baby was due. Shaking hands with a young student of Indian origin, he was desperate to connect. "Me and India are big partners," he said. "My foundation, you know, we've helped 1.4 million people in 70 counties. I'm doing work in Delhi and Mumbai on a big global warming project." And he was sure to tell everyone within earshot that "Hillary would be a better president than I ever was," adding "I really believe that" for emphasis.

But as Bill made his way through the throng--it took him over an hour to pose for every picture, sign every book and shake every hand--cries of "o-BAM-a!" overwhelmed the calls of "Yes, She Can!" And that underlined the problem: there were as many protesting Obamaniacs in attendance as Clintonistas. In the end, Obama edged Clinton by seven points among North Carolina's rural voters, who made up a full 47 percent of the primary electorate, and won the state by nearly 15 points. Neither stat was surprising on its face; Obama was originally expected to beat Clinton there by at least 15. But because the Clintons--and especially Bill--had campaigned so hard, and fallen so short, the chatterati treated the results as a surprise. "The decision of Clinton to contest North Carolina and give Obama an expectations victory was costly," wrote Marc Ambinder. Ultimately, the Bill Factor worked against Hillary. In electoral terms, he was irrelevant. But in terms of expectations, his effort made N.C. look like more of a loss than it might otherwise have been.

In retrospect, Indiana may have been a better target. There, Clinton trounced Obama 66-34 among rural voters. But because they made up a mere 17 percent of electorate, she could only manage a 14,000-vote victory--which wasn't nearly enough offset Obama's Tar Heel landslide. Who knows what a little more lovin' from Bubba might have done...

UPDATE, May 8: According to Carrie Dann at MSNBC, Bill hit a whopping 41 of the state's 100 counties, but only 18 of them went for Hillary. Meanwhile, in Indiana, the former president visited 35 counties--and his wife won all but eight. So there you go.