After all, my GOP Talking Points suggest a narrow role for the Democratic primary: To aid and abet the nomination of Hillary Clinton as part of a not-so-secret bid to facilitate the eventual election of John McCain.

But I can't do it, because if I were voting Tuesday, it would be for Barack Obama.

You could say one part of my decision to rule out Sen. Clinton was made "by the book" - more specifically, her book, Living History, which was published in 2003. Unintentionally, it served as a reminder of an era that stands in stark contrast to the nation's current quest for change.

For the last several weeks, the memoirs of the three remaining presidential candidates have been sitting on my nightstand. On this page, I've already penned my thoughts on Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father and John McCain's Faith of My Fathers. Each was insightful and compelling. Both candidates are forthcoming in print with both their virtues and their foibles.

Neither seemed interested in subjugating the story of his life to the straitjacket of today's political discourse. That is, unfortunately, where their memoirs diverge from Living History - and where Clinton's memoir causes me to think this is a chapter of American history we need not relive.

Hillary as scribe initially succeeded in softening some of the bias I admit to harboring since the Clinton years. How could a reader not smile when she relates her younger brother Tony's childhood ambition of digging a hole to China - a construction site incentivized by her mother, who dropped chopsticks or fortune cookies into the dirt?

Alas, those childhood memories were overshadowed by reminders of the baggage the Arkansas power couple brought with them to the national stage. An autobiography that sought to humanize the former first lady instead brought back memories of eight years in which the nation was consumed by partisanship and bickering. Have we forgotten the climate surrounding the federal government shutdown in 1995?

Which presents this question: Why, in the face of an attractive alternative, would Democratic voters wish to revisit that political tumult?

Learning Hillary Clinton's side of her trek from outside of Chicago to the White House is to gain her perspective on such ignobles as her prowess with cattle futures and margin calls, her failed bid to reform health care, and Travelgate.

In each instance, and plenty of others, she has a seemingly reasonable explanation for how and why she came under intense scrutiny. For example, with regard to the travel-office controversy, she explains that it was "the first manifestation of an obsession for investigation that persisted into the next millennium."

Hmmmm. OK. But then there's Travelgate, and the ethical issues that surrounded Vince Foster's suicide, Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Webster Hubbell, the discovery of the Rose Law Firm billing records, the resignation of Dick Morris, and of course Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment proceedings. Pretty soon the explanations and finger-pointing in the direction of conservatives begin to run thin.

Is it fair to hold her solely accountable for all that was negative? No: Her husband was more culpable than she was. Did the conservative media perpetuate the drumbeat of downfall? For sure. As she wrote: "If you believed everything you heard on the airwaves in 1994, you would conclude that your president was a Communist, that the First Lady a murderess, and that together they hatched a plot to take away your guns and force you to give up your family doctor (if you had one) for a socialist health-care system."

But sooner or later, anyone assessing the Clinton legacy - his and hers - must choose whether to accept the always-looming explanation: It was all part of the vast right-wing conspiracy to do them harm. That strains credulity, and it becomes reasonable to ask why the nation would choose to revisit that path when there is an alternative route.

Sen. Clinton has an ideological twin who presents himself without as much baggage. But, the differences between Clinton and Obama are relatively minor. For the most part each offers a similarly liberal agenda that will cause me angst in the fall, but I'll deal with that when it comes.

The defining policy point that separates them? Obama seems more intent on taking out Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri - a significant policy position in a campaign that mostly ignored issues of terrorists and Pakistan in its early stages.

And the defining outlook? If Sen. Clinton is elected, the climate that pervaded Washington for the eight years her husband was president, much like what we are going through now with the Bush administration, will surely return. The campaign has taught us that. It will be four or eight years spent debating the most recent example of whether sniper fire disrupted a landing in Bosnia.

All of which is not to ignore the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency, and her service. But in the end, this couple is just too toxic. The nation yearns for less partisanship, and Hillary Clinton is ill-suited to be the harbinger of such change.

She's got an explanation for all that went wrong before, but where there's smoke, there's fire. End of story.