With book, Clinton sends unintended message. (Commentary).

OLSSON'S Books and Records in Arlington, Va. announced it would open its doors at 12:01 Monday morning to sell the first copies of Hillary Clinton's intensely hyped memoir, "Living History."

So I forced myself to stay awake past midnight, drove several miles through a pelting rain, and stood in line to buy the book. I did this for two reasons. First, I wanted to start reading "Living History" as soon as possible. Second, I wanted to see what kind of moron would stay awake past midnight and drive through a pelting rain just to buy a book by Hillary Clinton.

Aside from me, of course.

As it turns out, the folks in line at Olsson' weren't morons at all, but very nice people who had been drawn to this hot-off-the-press totem for a variety of reasons not limited to insomnia. "I wanted to buy it right away as a symbolic gesture, to show my support for Hillary," said Chris Carney, an attorney from Arlington.

Wyolanda Johnson, of Oxen Hill, Md., said her motives were less high-minded.

"Everybody will be gossiping about it around the coffee machine at work tomorrow morning" she said, "and if I read a few chapters tonight, I'll be first with the good coffee gossip."

Wyolanda was in for a crushing disappointment. Having choked down its 562 pages, I can confirm its gossip value is close to zero.

The book will be a letdown for those millions of Americans who found the Clinton White House interesting only as a soap opera. But for the rest of us, the senator's reticence will come as a relief.

How close? When the Associated Press finagled an embargoed copy last week, the first scoop was: "Hillary Clinton Describes President's Confession of Lewinsky Affair: 'I Could Hardly Breathe.'"

"Living History" is revealing in the inadvertent way celebrity memoirs often are. Though ghostwriters wrote the book in a blandly conversational tone, essential elements of Clinton's personality break through.

After 18 months in the Senate, in which she devoted herself to the same pork-barreling and logrolling as her less-famous colleagues, Clinton has proved she is not the left-wing ideologue her enemies once imagined her to be.

She is, however, a gut-fighting partisan, and her book is an exercise in pure political malice.

She never misses a chance to throw an elbow--even in an otherwise touching description of her Republican father. "Unlike many people who call themselves conservatives today, he understood the importance of fiscal responsibility."

When a lunatic fires shots at the White House, she takes care to describe him as a "gun advocate" unbalanced by the fact that President Bill Clinton's "Brady bill had prevented him from buying a pistol a month earlier."

She's expert at drive-by slander. She takes one last gratuitous kick at Billy Dale, the hapless director of the White House travel office fired at Mrs. Clinton's urging.

Of course, Clinton's political opponents were pretty good at slander too, and the former First Lady's friends will say her partisanship is purely reactive and defensive. Yet the book fits alongside other personality traits, equally conspicuous, equally unappealing.

Self-aggrandizement, for example: "While Bill talked about social change," she writes, "I embodied it." She brings hope to the unlucky Balkans: "I helped the Macedonians reopen textile factories to put people back to work." (Did she use a crowbar?)

Will "Living History" sell? I have my doubts. The potential audience contains many Wyolanda Johnsons, who from years of habit now look to Hillary Clinton not only for inspiration but for titillation, too.

With this austere and bloodless book, Clinton has proved she will no longer satisfy such vulgar craving. Her days as gossip fodder are over.

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist with Bloomberg News.