I'm a sucker for character development--which makes me an inexhaustible consumer of Victorian novels and Law & Order episodes (not as incommensurable a pairing as it may seem), and which makes me, too, a bit of a lifelong sucker when it comes to human relations. I can get so caught up in trying to understand why people do the crazy, mean, small, or inexplicable things they do that I tolerate it much longer than I should. The search for explanations can, when carried on too long, turn one into an accidental apologist. But it also creates a keen appreciation for those who can balance explanation and judgment. Hence the draw of novels--and of social commentary that proceeds along novelistic lines.

If George Eliot were reporting on the election cycle, she might produce a piece rather like the one Camille Paglia has recently published on Hillary Clinton. Margaret Soltan cited this piece the other day quite selectively--which is how I found it. She flagged the detail about how Hillary-the-governor's-wife used to read books in the bleachers at Arkansas football games, and tongue-in-cheekly cited it as a reason to vote for Clinton.

But the rest of the article amasses many reasons not to--and does so in a manner that is strongly reminiscent of how the great Victorian novelists handled character, amassing evocative detail and then interpreting it through a moral lens that is ultimately most interested in evaluating quality of character. That evaluation, in turn, is grounded in a strong sense of how early formative experience shapes personality in almost overdetermined ways that one may mask, but never escape:

A swarm of biographers in miners' gear has tried to plumb the inky depths of Hillary Rodham Clinton's warren-riddled psyche. My metaphor is drawn (as Oscar Wilde's prim Miss Prism would say) from the Scranton coalfields, to which came the Welsh family that produced Hillary's harsh, domineering father.

Hillary's feckless, loutish brothers (who are kept at arm's length by her operation) took the brunt of Hugh Rodham's abuse in their genteel but claustrophobic home. Hillary is the barracuda who fought for dominance at their expense. Flashes of that ruthless old family drama have come out repeatedly in this campaign, as when Hillary could barely conceal her sneers at her fellow debaters onstage -- the wimpy, cringing brothers at the dinner table.

Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

It's no coincidence that Hillary's staff has always consisted mostly of adoring women, with nerdy or geeky guys forming an adjunct brain trust. Hillary's rumored hostility to uniformed military men and some Secret Service agents early in the first Clinton presidency probably belongs to this pattern. And let's not forget Hillary, the governor's wife, pulling out a book and rudely reading in the bleachers during University of Arkansas football games back in Little Rock.

Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century. History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.

How does all this affect the prospect of a Hillary presidency? With her eyes on the White House, Hillary as senator has made concerted and generally successful efforts to improve her knowledge of and relationship to the military -- crucial for any commander-in-chief but especially for the first female one. However, I remain concerned about her future conduct of high-level diplomacy. Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary's default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. It's a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias. How will that play in the Muslim world?

The Clintons live to campaign. It's what holds them together and gives them a glowing sense of meaning and value. Their actual political accomplishments are fairly slight. The obsessive need to keep campaigning may mean a president Hillary would go right on spewing the bitterly partisan rhetoric that has already paralyzed Washington. Even if Hillary could be elected (which I'm skeptical about), how in tarnation could she ever govern?

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But Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House?

By the way, if you haven't read Middlemarch--or even if you haven't read it in the last five years--try to find the time to do it. It's a new book every time, and it's a masterful portrait of how hypocrisy, personal weakness, driving ambition, and a false belief in one's own infallible integrity combine to create politics as we know it.