The Perils of Obama

"You'd vote for Barack Obama, wouldn't you?" Ambinder demands of me in the latest edition of The Table. The answer is no, but as I've said before, I have the same sentiments about him - respect, admiration, interest in what he has to say - that many conservatives seem to feel, which makes me instinctively prefer the notion of an Obama Presidency to the idea of having Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. But as I've also said before, these sentiments coexist with an awareness that an Obama Presidency might be much, much worse from a conservative point of view than a Clinton Restoration - not only in the very long term, with Obama playing a liberal Reagan to a larger leftward shift in American politics, but in the world of short-term politics as well.

What do I have in mind? Well, possibilities like this , for instance. I know conservatives weren't great admirers of Bill Clinton's AG choices either, but the prospect of Attorney General John Edwards is exactly the sort of thing that ought to make right-wing Obamaphiles think twice.