What would Wendell Willkie do? That is the question I’m thinking of in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s interview with CNN, in which she blamed her election defeat on the FBI’s James Comey and the Russians and announced that she’s joined the “resistance.”

Willkie was the Republican standard-bearer who lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the election of 1940. He promptly went to the White House and offered to help FDR prepare for what became World War II.

What a contrast with Hillary Clinton. Only weeks ago the defeated Democrat delivered an exceptionally gracious concession to Donald Trump, in which she congratulated the Republican and “offered to work with him on behalf of our country.”

“I hope,” she added, with her husband standing beside her, “that he will be a successful president for all Americans.”

“We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought,” Clinton told her supporters. “But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future.

“Donald Trump is going to be our president,” she said, adding, “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”

“Her finest hour,” I called it at the time.

That, however, was then. On CNN this week, the former first lady blamed not only Mr. Comey and the Russians but also bias against women. She went on to declare that if the election had been held in October, she’d have won.

This turns out to be cross-wise with the latest findings of top Democratic strategists who have been poring over election results. They, according to two reports this week, have concluded Clinton had a far bigger problem with rust-belt and erstwhile Obama voters anxious over the economy.

One would think that they could get this message through to Hillary Clinton herself and that she might react with some humility. Instead, in her CNN interview, Mrs. Clinton effectively withdrew her offer to work with the president.

“I am now,” she confessed, “back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance.”

This word “resistance” has lately been creeping into the Democrats’ dictionary. It is, at least to those of us of a certain age, a hubristic formulation, echoing the word the French underground used to describe its campaign against the Nazis.

All the more reason to have hoped that at least Mrs. Clinton would somehow avoid that descent into bitterness. It’s not, after all, anything like the usual practice for a defeated candidate of either party to launch a resistance campaign.

Neither President George H.W. Bush nor Senator Robert Dole joined any “resistance” after losing, in 1992 and 1996, to Mrs. Clinton’s husband. Nor did either Senator McCain or Governor Mitt Romney joined any “resistance” to President Obama.

Which brings me to Wendell Willkie. The Indiana Republican lost to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 election, yet is still widely admired — in good part because of the example he set in defeat, when he swung behind FDR.

That began with his decision to back the fight for the Lend-Lease program to supply aid and materiel to Britain and, among others, Free France. FDR announced the program not long after defeating Willkie.

The heroic Hoosier offered to help. He and FDR soon struck a deal under which Willkie became an informal emissary of the 32nd president, traveling abroad to show bipartisan support for our side in the world conflict.

Good for both of them. Willkie would make trips for FDR not only to Britain but to Africa, the Middle East and even the Soviet Union. The world would know that whatever their differences, America was united in the war.

Is the analogy with today too much of a stretch? No doubt there are differences between now and then. World War II had already begun by early 1941, even if we were not yet in it). Still, our global struggle against terror today is plenty desperate — and in need of a bipartisan show of support in respect of foreign policy?

Who could have been more effective at showing that than the defeated secretary of state who once offered to work with Mr. Trump on behalf of our country? Did Mrs. Clinton ever really mean it? Or had she always intended to join the “resistance”?

President Obama warned his successor of the clear and present danger gathering in Korea. We’re already engaged against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic State. If, God forbid, the war spreads, against whom would Mrs. Clinton want to be “resisting”?