The Hillary camp is well aware that beneath the glitter of her celebrity status, she does not have much legislative experience nor does she have many political accomplishments. Thus, last week, Hillary began to bring Bill on the campaign trail in her bid to secure the Democratic nomination. This is a clear sign she does not believe her record alone is sufficient: she needs to wrap herself in the clothes of the former president to elevate her standing.

As is well known, Hillary is a lawyer by training. Three years after she completed her law degree at Yale, she joined the Rose Law Firm.  Throughout the twelve years as First Lady of Arkansas, she maintained her position as a lawyer. It was mostly when her husband bungled a campaign—as he did in the Arkansas governor’s race of 1982—that she played a preeminent role in politics, especially to help steer his career. Thus, as First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary became a crafty adviser to Bill but did not participate directly in the legislative process.

Shortly after Bill became president of the United States, for the first time in her career in 1993 she was given a political portfolio. As leader of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform she was directly responsible for one of the worst policy debacles of Bill’s first term. In leading the task force she was haughty, arrogant, and unwilling to seek a compromise when many were available and the moment was ripe for providing at least some piecemeal reform of health care. Instead, her sweeping plan was universally condemned. The damage to her reputation and to Bill was so severe it led Bill to shut her out from policy-making: he no longer included her in his daily circle of White House briefings. He lost confidence in her and relegated her to an insignificant, largely ceremonial and traditional role as First Lady. That is, until later in his second term during the outbreak of the Lewinsky scandal.

Hillary acknowledged in her memoir, Living History (2003), that her political inexperience was a factor in the Hillarycare debacle. In the ensuing mid-term election of 1994, Republicans captured Congress. Thus, Hillary’s first major effort as a politician in her own right led to resounding defeat for herself, her husband and the Democratic Party.

During Bill’s second term, Hillary became an advocate for women and children. She spent her time promoting her book, It Takes a Village (1996) and making speeches around the world. She acted mostly as a goodwill ambassador. In 1997 she had two legislative achievements: she initiated the Children’s Health Insurance Program and she helped secure the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. When the Lewinsky scandal erupted, Hillary abandoned her foreign travels and returned at the forefront of Bill’s team of advisers: she was instrumental in helping Bill ride the storm. Thus, throughout Bill’s second term her political experience was limited. She was mostly invaluable in helping Bill dodge prosecutors in the many scandals in which he was under investigation and in winning sympathy during the Lewinsky circus.

Having been in her husband’s shadow throughout her years as First Lady of Arkansas and then as First Lady of the United States, she had an opportunity at last in 2000 to demonstrate her political skills. Since 2000, as Senator for New York, unencumbered by protocol or the long reach of her husband’s scandalous behavior, she has been free to show the nation her mettle as a leader. Yet, what did she achieve in these years? Mostly, she used her Senate seat as a prelude to her ultimate goal of becoming president of the United States: she sat on five committees to bolster her credentials, she embarked on a book tour for Living History to repair the damage to her reputation and, in partnership with Bill, she became the Democratic Party’s most skillful fund raiser. Her great achievement as Senator is that she consolidated and expanded her reputation not as some brilliant, capable and effective politician with real legislative achievements or as a Senator with judicious and ponderous opinions—but instead, as an American celebrity.

If we examine Hillary’s career thus far we must acknowledge that since the late seventies she has two primary achievements: she is a great campaign strategist and she is a great fund raiser. Yet, as a political leader, her record is paltry at best. At her worst, she is intransigent and incompetent. Essentially, Hillary has not devoted her career to serving the American people: she has used power to serve herself.

In the coming months, she will try to convince the American people that she has more experience than her closest rival, Barack Obama. Yet Obama, who is fourteen years her junior and has only been in the Senate since 2004, has a much more impressive record—as Senator he sponsored 152 bills and resolutions and co-sponsored 427. He has an even longer list of achievements from his previous days in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He can therefore easily smash Hillary’s latest illusion.

And we can only now begin to imagine what Rudy Giuliani—a hard boiled, tried and tested politician, with a long history as a legislator and an even more inspiring record as a leader in moments of national crisis—will do in a national campaign against Hillary.

In short, when we analyze the career of the Hill-Billies, we realize that when Bill turns to Hillary for help, it is in order to conceal a weakness. Similarly, Hillary is now returning the favor: when she parades Bill on her arm it is merely a transparent attempt to put a band aid on the fact that, on her own, she has been an ineffective politician and a weak, vacuous leader. The Hill-Billies have begun their song and dance: yet once we strip the illusory veil, we see clearly Hillary marching forward in this campaign, haughty and proud, but nonetheless an empress without clothes.

- Washington Watch is a weekly column published in Insight (www.insightmag.com).