While reporters and commentators are positively salivating over the prospect of Hillary Rodham Clinton running to be junior senator from New York, a small matter always seems to be overlooked.

Her record.

Even with the first lady’s newfound affection for the New York Yankees, displayed at a Rose Garden assemblage last week, her claim to represent the Empire State is tenuous at best. So this is a candidacy that, by all rights, should rest on whether her qualifications are extraordinary enough to cross state lines.

If she won, would she accomplish something, or be one more generator of rarefied hot air?

Would she improve the sagging reputation of the Congress" Or would the carpetbag that she carries to her not-yet-adopted state be stuffed with ethical problems?

For clues, we can start with her official biography of her White House years. According to the top accomplishments listed on her web-site, Mrs. Clinton:

• Chaired President Clinton’s task force on health care reform. Of course, what is not said is that the effort was a colossal failure and that Mrs. Clinton was assigned much of the blame. She had shrouded the plan with secrecy that bred public distrust from the start. A federal judge eventually ruled that her $9 million task force had misled the court and violated federal open records procedures.

• Made a "true home for her husband and daughter Chelsea" in the White House by adding a family kitchen so that "the three of them could gather around a table" on the second floor.

Depending on your perspective, this is either sad or cynical, considering what Bill Clinton was doing with an intern not much older than his daughter on the first floor of the White House.

Being the "wronged-wife" fanned Mrs. Clinton’s rise in popularity after the world learned, in excruciating detail, of her husband’s infidelities. But was Mrs. Clinton a sap, or a power seeker who was willing to stand by her man to keep the perks of her position" Either way, she has not set a strong example for other women. Is this the stuff of which great senators are made"

• Authored It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us.

She became the first first lady to become an Emmy winner for a recording of her reelection-year book, which is filled with homilies on child rearing and recommendations for more government aid in the effort. The problem is that her dysfunctional home contradicts the whole "village" notion that she describes in her book.

Writing of incessant worries about Chelsea, she said, "My biggest challenge was to quell my longing to protect my daughter from everybody and everything that might hurt or disappoint her."

Yet the person and actions that most harmed Chelsea weren’t "out there." They were tolerated inside the first lady’s own home. And now with her looming senatorial bid, Chelsea must brace for a new round of humiliating discussions about her father’s philandering.

(And to that, add a flap over the production of It Takes of Village. The first lady’s co-author Barbara Feinman Todd, who recently complained to the magazine Capital Style that the White House and publisher Simon & Schuster had balked at paying the last $30,000 installment of her $120,000 fee.)

• Hosted conferences on children.

After the health care fiasco, Mrs. Clinton resumed her past practice of advocacy for a variety of children’s issues.

Her web-site touts that she was "central to the passage" of the Adoption and Safe Family Act of 1997, a measure to promote adoption for children caught in foster care. Mrs. Clinton made several telephone calls to senators and has been credited for speeding up a bill that already had wide, bipartisan support. It passed by voice vote in the Senate and by 406-7 in the House.

• Traveled as goodwill ambassador abroad.

Perhaps her globetrotting (including solo visits to 60 countries) would equip her to help draft foreign aid bills. A less charitable view on her travels is that, facing the withering criticism at home after her health care defeat, she chose to go to places such as Africa, South Asia and Latin America, where she was greeted with adulation and feted like royalty.

Missing from the first lady’s web-page is an accomplishment filled with irony: The mousy candidate’s wife, who arrived in the capital in 1993 still wearing the occasional head-band and stressing substance over style, has transformed into a glamorized first lady featured on the cover of Vogue magazine.

What that will do to prepare her to be a good legislator is a mystery, but glamour and celebrity is what this hyped up campaign is all about. Unanswered are serious questions about controversies that would almost certainly sink another senatorial hopeful.

Among them:

• What was her role in a land transaction in Arkansas that led to the collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan" That issue is central to the coming trial of her former law partner Webster Hubell, who worked with Mrs. Clinton on the project.

• Did the first lady play a role in firing the White House travel office staff with a plan to install Clinton cronies" Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr may resurrect that issue with a final report from his investigation. A memo from former Clinton aide David Watkins put the blame on her, quoting her as demanding "We need these people out, we need our people in."

• What about the $999,540 she made on a $1,000 investment in cattle futures in 1979 with help from an attorney for Tyson’s Foods, the Arkansas company that bank-rolled her husband’s race for governor? Her staff once told reporters that Mrs. Clinton had gotten her tips from reading the Wall Street Journal.

• How much did she know about her husband’s reputation for abusing women? Does she believe Juanita Broaddrick, the nursing home executive who said in an NBC interview this year that she had been raped by Clinton 21 years ago? When did she first learn of the allegation? What has she asked her husband? Those are questions that a candidate for Senate, even a first lady who is running as "first victim," should not be able to duck.

(This report was compiled by a Washington-based newspaper chain reporter who contributes anonymously to Capitol Hill Blue)