Advancing Hillary.

• Author: Morris, Vince
• Position: Political Booknotes

WHEN THE PRESS REPORTED that Hillary and Bill Clinton had rolled out of the White House with an assortment of flatware, end tables, solas, fish knives, soup bowls and golf clubs, even many friends were mystified. It looked so tacky. Here you have two lawyers--one an ex-president and the other an incoming senator--commanding unlimited earning potential, trucking away what surely was a quite unneeded plethora of valuable objects from well-wishers, which might have stayed far more fittingly in the executive mansion. It's one of the lingering mysteries of the late days of the Clinton administration. Sadly, a new book by Patrick Halley on Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn't throw much light on that episode.

Halley's treatment of the gift mess is confined to one short paragraph: "As for taking the gifts, which I think was a real mistake, it comes down to a chip on her shoulder," writes Halley. To be fair, his book doesn't promise insight--merely a look at Hillary Clinton's "journey" from Arkansas to the Senate. But given his nearly decade-long association with the Clintons and his proximity to her, it seems reasonable to expect more. Didn't she understand how taking so many gifts would appear to the public? Was she unaware that it had happened? Or did she weigh the possible outcry and do it anyway? We get no clues from Halley's book.

Instead, it tells us about his experience planning events for Hillary Clinton during the 1992 campaign, running through her husband's presidency, and including a handful of her events as she campaigned in 2000 for the New York Senate seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It ends on the eve of her election.

Because Hillary has, in many ways, become just another junior senator, her presence in the Capitol is mostly overlooked by the national press these days. And despite the tons of ink spilled on her over the years, she is still something of an enigma. For that reason, Halley's book looked appealing, a peek at Hillary Clinton from someone who wasn't trying to psychoanalyze her--like Gail Sheehy--or destroy her--like the late Barbara Olson.

As an "advance man," Halley is part of the under-appreciated machinery of modern politics. He visits places before the candidates do, setting up props, interviews, and crowds to help shape the message that the candidate is coming to deliver. In one passage, Halley describes flying to Arkansas after a 1996 tornado had crashed through tiny Fort Smith. First, he surveyed the damage...