After trudging through the more than 1,000 pages of Hillaryography in the form of Carl Bernstein’s “A Woman in Charge” (Knopf, 628 pages, $27.95) and Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.’s “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Clinton” (Little, Brown; 438 pages; $29.99), the reader can only conclude that inside dopesters make for bad biographers.

Both books promise stunning disclosures. The introduction to “Her Way” lays out the assumptions behind both books. Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta argue that “never before has such a high profile candidate occupied the spotlight for so long without the public’s learning the facts about so much that is crucial to finally understanding her.” This is conceptually misguided on two counts. First, almost no one has been more investigated, more written about, and more studied than Senator Clinton. My shelves are positively groaning with books and magazine articles about the Clintons. Secondly, because both books are written by investigative journalists, they confuse the requirement of a biographer for what Max Weber called verstehen, the ability to put yourself in your subject’s place, with snippets of new material calculated to create headlines. Mr. Bernstein, famous for his Watergate journalism for the Washington Post and Mr. Gerth, who made his reputation covering Whitewater for the New York Times, approach their subject as if she were a scandal whose secrets still need to be unlocked.

The “scandal” in question is the matter of Mrs. Clinton’s supposed “inauthenticity” as measured, in part, by the distance between her personal and political life. The 1960s pop psychology version of authenticity — being true to one’s inner self as if there were no inner conflicts or unavoidable conflicts between people’s private and public lives — is central to both books. A public figure who has changed her modes of dress, hairstyle, and even accent as often as that famous Yankee fan Hillary Clinton is bound to raise such questions. Yet no one accused Nelson Rockefeller of being inauthentic when he feigned to enjoy Coney Island hot dogs while campaigning.

But both Mrs. Clinton and her biographers are products of the 1960s cult of authenticity she famously invoked as the commencement speaker at her 1969 Wellesley graduation. Rebuking Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke as a political trimmer, she criticized compromises with the “prevailing acquisitive culture” of corporate and university life. That, she said, was “not the way of life for” her. “We’re searching,” she explained on behalf of her generation, “for more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating modes of living.”

It was this claim of being better and purer than all who came before that has annoyed so many, and not just right-wingers, ever since. Had the Clintons been more willing to acknowledge their generally conventional political methods and motives they would have generated far less resentment. A good deal of Senator Obama’s popularity today comes from young, upper middle class professionals who, in the words of one, are “sick of the ’68ers like Hillary Clinton and their endless pretensions.”

But in the years that followed, American business, that bête noire of the Aquarians, learned that it could not only adapt to the Aquarians’ impulses but also make money off them. The Clintons, like their many Bobo supporters, also learned to evolve. The striking thing about Mrs. Clinton’s time as “first partner” is how well she adapted to the adverse political climate after her health care debacle. As senator, she’s made her mark by not hogging the spotlight and by forging alliances across the aisles with Republicans who once voted to impeach her husband.

Mr. Bernstein has a scant concern for practical politics. He has a number of new sources, including the diary of Diane Blair, a close friend of Mrs. Clinton who recently passed away, but they add little to what we already knew about Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Bernstein, who is generally friendlier than Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta to the subject, lacks the writing ability, imagination, and broad background in history and policy essential to write a good biography. When he approves of what Mrs. Clinton has done, he says she has “evolved,” when he disapproves he accuses her of being inauthentic.

Just as Bob Woodward in his search for the secrets of the Supreme Court neglected the open secret of the content of the court’s opinions, this crew misses the crucial evidence hiding in plain sight of all. The Lani Guinier affair is mentioned in neither book, but it was one of the key moments that marked Mrs. Clinton’s passage from lingering New Leftism to solid centrism.

Lani Guinier, a left wing African-American attorney and law professor, was a personal friend of the Clintons during the long “conversation” that brought them to the White House. During his first year in office, President Clinton nominated her for assistant attorney General for Civil Rights. Ms. Guinier had stayed true to the legacy of the 1960s. In order to speed up black progress, she wanted to get beyond “one person, one vote” by means of a “deliberative gerrymander” that gave additional weight to those designated as “authentic” — that word again — black legislators. Ms. Guinier’s aim was to make sure that “Each group has a right to have its interests satisfied a fair proportion of the time.” Leave aside the question of how authenticity is determined, Ms. Guinier’s ideas were only a step away from slave-holding Senator John C. Calhoun’s call for “concurrent majorities.” But when Hubert Humphrey pushed for the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, one of the greatest pieces of legislation in American history, he promised that it wouldn’t generate “an endless power struggle among organized groups … a society where there is no place for the independent individual.” Yet here was an appointment which seemed to make “Crow Jiminsm” entirely legitimate. Unable to defend her positions, and faced with a hail storm of criticism, the Clintons agreed to withdraw their friend’s name from the nomination.

The Clintons weathered the storm, but the fight over Ms. Guinier and the larger fight that ensued over their support of welfare reform was not inauthentic sloppy centrism. It was a very successful attempt, the rhetoric of the 1960s notwithstanding, to incorporate African-Americans into the normal flow of American political life. By making African-Americans feel welcome, by selling many on welfare reform as no others could have done, they gave the country a lasting accomplishment. The Clinton presidency was, in the words of one observer, the end of the civil rights era. It died, he said, of success.

In their brief treatment of what they regard as a minor topic, Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta present welfare reform as a mere accommodation to Newt Gingrich, as if Mr. Clinton hadn’t campaigned in 1992 on the slogan of “ending welfare as we know it.” But then again, contrary to the evidence Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta aren’t sure that welfare reform has been a success. Like Mr. Bernstein, policy doesn’t interest them unless it has a gotcha element.

If Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta’s book makes one contribution, it is that they discuss Mrs. Clinton’s Senate years at length, a topic Mr. Bernstein scants. “Her Way” has made headlines by reporting that Mrs. Clinton never read the full National Intelligence Report on going to war in Iraq. There is a good deal to question in the Senator’s handling of the decision to go to war. But the account in “Her Way” doesn’t inspire confidence. The authors criticize Mrs. Clinton for not supporting Senator Carl Levin’s legislation to guarantee a two-step process before we went to war. That was probably a wise measure, but Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta don’t note that at the same time Mr. Levin was also arguing against going to war on the grounds that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction and could inflict numerous American casualties.

In their discussion of Iraq Messrs. Gerth and Van Natta repeatedly use a left-wing organization, Code Pink, and one of its leaders, Medea Benjamin, as one of their yardsticks for how Mrs Clinton should have acted. But although these intrepid bloodhounds interviewed Ms. Benjamin, they never ask, just who is she? She’s a far-left flak for Fidel Castro, an opponent of the war not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan as well, who has had only kind things to say about Saddam Hussein.

The massive publicity behind these books guarantees they will be bought, but how many will actually be read, other than by opposition researchers? Those who want to read about the likely Democratic nominee for president in 2008 are best advised to read the opening chapters of Michael Tomasky’s “Hillary’s Turn” (2001). It does more to illuminate Mrs. Clinton’s political persona than the endless pages of turgid prose presented by these sleuths in search of marketable proof of her inauthenticity.

Mr. Siegel is the author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life” (Encounter Books).