That's why the spectacle of Hillary's political progress toward the White House looks nothing less than surreal. And hence my compulsion to seek out that big box of books upstairs, to regain the physical evidence of the complex weave of money-grubbing and power-playing that made the Clintons and their White House years unique.

I found the box, finally (after whacking my head on an attic beam), filled with "Sellout" by David Schippers, "The Breach" by Peter Baker, "Friends in High Places" by Webb Hubbell, "State of a Union" by Jerry Oppenheimer, "Hell to Pay" by Barbara Olson, and on and on.

Frankly, it all adds up to a giant cascade of yuck, which both Clintons have always ducked by, well, ducking...evading questions..."moving on." National Review's Jay Nordlinger recently recalled attending a 2000 press conference of then Senate-candidate Hillary Clinton and asking: "Do you stand by your assertion that the charges against your husband stemmed from `a vast right-wing conspiracy'?" Her reply: "I'm not going back, I'm going forward."

But what if it turns out she can't really leave the past behind? This question I have after picking up the 1998 book "Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash" by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II. It's a detailed account of presidential perfidy in, essentially, making available White House access, policy secrets, supercomputers and military technology (including advanced rocket-guidance technology) to China even as a rogue's gallery of Chinese communist agents, spies, arms dealers, pimps and gangsters were pumping massive infusions of cash in Clinton campaign coffers.

For starters, shouldn't Hillary Clinton at least have to explain how, as president, she would ensure that these compromises to national security that happened on her husband's watch wouldn't happen on hers?

I'd say yes, of course, and much more. In other words, this is no time to close the book.