It would be fun to vote for a woman in the upcoming presidential election, and I wish I could. But the fundamental problem with Mrs. Clinton is the fundamental problem with Mitt Romney: She has that knack for saying nice-sounding things, for saying good things—up to a point—and then turning around and either doing the opposite or using her words as a rubric for economic rapacity. Bush Lite.

Her vote for George Bush’s war authorization is the perfect example. The public overwhelmingly recognizes that the war resolution gave Bush the out—or in—he needed. But does Mrs. Clinton acknowledge that, and acknowledge that she made a mistake? No. Her version of the story is that she voted for the war in order to rein Bush in. She has used exactly the same argument to justify her vote for the Iran resolution.

The current smokescreens do not help. Her current use of false accusations against other Democrats, adding another weapon to her arsenal, does not make the Bush-Lite strategy more appealing. We are all fallible human beings, and we all fall short of perfect truth. But Mrs. Clinton carries a pleasant, complacent deceitfulness into sociopathic territory, like the wife of a rapist in denial. She can sound so nice, it’s heartbreaking. She looks and sounds, when she speaks, just like one of the nicer moms you remember from PTA meetings—sensible, temperate, unaffected—and then she trots out a line about Barack Obama, for example, that turns out to be exactly the reverse of the truth.

A quick note about that South Carolina debate: John Edwards was excellent, coming way out on top. Barack Obama came out much better, and came across better, than Hillary Clinton. I noticed at the time—amazed—that her accusation about Obama and “Republican good ideas” was false, and could hardly believe my ears. I’m glad other writers have documented the falsity, saving me some work with transcripts. But why did she let fly with that silly accusation?

Is Mrs. Clinton is using lines on Obama that she has used on Bill Clinton, or could have used? It's Clinton who has shown the tendency to speak fulsomely about Ronald Reagan, etc. Obama was giving a measured and accurate assessment of Reaganite political changes, not saying that Reagan’s ideas, if you call them that, were good. Come to think of it, of all the Democrats in this campaign, it is the Clintons who would have to be voted Most Likely to Revert to Reaganomics-Lite. Look at Mrs. Clinton’s donors.

Then there was that other jaw-dropping line that Mrs. Clinton used on Barack Obama: “Well, you know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.” Personally, I do not think this is a good read on Obama, whose positions generally seem to me to be measured and rational, in other words well thought out. (The whole “present” vote accusation is a non-issue. There are times when it’s better to vote present than for or against, and 100-plus Present votes is no disgrace among thousands of votes cast. Btw, the number of votes cast is also a reminder that Obama has actually been a legislator longer than Mrs. Clinton has.)

The person this line does fit, on the other hand, is Bill Clinton, now lumbering around like an elongated W. C. Fields, red-faced and testy, blustering and bullying reporters—and blaming the media for his wife’s problematic candidacy.

Unattractive, one might call it, for a start. And yet the Clintons themselves seem to feel no doubt that Bill Clinton is adored wherever he goes, and Chris Matthews touts him as the biggest political genius of our time.

A really smart oppo campaign commercial would feature that clip of Bill Clinton mimicking Sally Field (“You like me”).

Are the Clintons a bit piqued because Barack and Michelle Obama have such a clearly sound and good marriage, free of the scandal of Bill Clinton’s conduct?

It is hard to find graceful language to discuss this, but the bottom line is that Mrs. Clinton either can control Squalid Bill, or she cannot. If she can, she should. If she cannot—which is the way it looks—then she should not be running for the White House. And if she cannot control him now, during a campaign, it is hard to imagine that she would be able to control him in the White House.

But back to Mrs. Clinton’s own career. A good student in college and at Yale Law; flunked the bar exam; moved to Arkansas and re-took the bar exam there; passed. Married Bill Clinton, who became Arkansas’ attorney general and then governor for numerous terms, after a single one-term loss. Had a daughter to whom she has always been a good mother.

But her law career in Arkansas? She did not have one--not that everyone would consider that a criticism. Her legal career was as the governor’s wife. Look at where she worked. For all Mrs. Clinton’s high-sounding rhetoric about fighting, standing up to them, etc., did she take a low-paying public-service job in the Public Defender’s office? No. Did she go to work as an Assistant District Attorney, fighting crime? No. Welfare or Child Services? No. Did she work as a labor lawyer, helping organizers in Arkansas? Pursue corporate malefactors for workplace abuses or environmental abuses? Work for civil rights? Tackle sex discrimination? Sexual harassment? Get real. This is no Norma Rae. Mrs. Clinton went for a ‘good’ job--in a local law firm—which she got because of whom she was married to, not because she had recently obtained a law degree.

Ever since the chatter about Hillary Clinton for president began, I have thought of her as the stoploss candidate for the Republican Party and the corporate statism it now represents. At no time have her actions contradicted that view. Now, at this point, seeing one of the most bought-in politicians in the U.S. Senate being run for the White House as A Woman is like seeing those Virginia Slims cigarette advertisements represented as feminism.

In my opinion, Mrs. Clinton is nowhere near as bad as her husband. I know well that the Noise Machine has been savagely unfair to her—and even to Bill Clinton, which is not a feat that any ordinary group of people could pull off. I know they’ll be hideous to her if she is the nominee—running that photo of her as First Lady with her underpants showing, etc.—and I am not even considering those attacks as a factor. If I believed in her as a candidate, I would fight the whack jobs for her. But no informed person could believe that Mrs. Clinton will somehow turn around and insist on a full accounting of the lead-up to the Iraq war, when she has never done so before. Nor will she insist on completing the investigation into 9/11. She has never done so. Nor will she insist that election fraud be redressed and the problems with tainted vote technology be fixed. She has never done so before. And in spite of all Mr. Clinton’s blustering and yelling, actions still speak louder than words.