The tragedy of Obama is that, never having lost, he doesn't know how to lose well.

Victor Davis Hanson notes:

While losing debaters often can postfacto snipe about the slickness of their successful opponent, I can’t remember a disappointed loser replaying and reconfiguring the debate over the next few days on the campaign trail, in the weird fashion Obama has been offering teleprompted counter-arguments that he could never muster on his own during the actual faceoff. The classic blowhard, after all, is the loud blusterer, who always retells his own arguments and run-ins from the perspective of his own genius, thereby offering the embarrassing proof that he regrets just how poorly he was outfoxed and outargued without a script.

Having lost a couple of jury trials in a row, I learned something important - losing doesn't kill you. It isn't fun, but it is a fact of life and you have to deal with it and learn from it and recover from it, and if you are going to recover and move forward, you have to do it well and with class.

This classic scene from Deadwood makes the point with a poetic intensity: