Excitable Andy, if nothing else, lives down to his nickname in his latest column on the Democratic presidential campaign for the Times of London.  For example, his take on Clinton’s wins in Texas and Ohio:

Objectively, an accomplished senator won a couple of races – one by a mere 3% – against another senator in a presidential campaign. One senator is still mathematically unbeatable. But that will never capture the emotional toll that the Clintons continue to take on some of us. I’m not kidding. I woke up in a cold sweat early last Wednesday. There have been moments this past week when I have felt physically ill at the thought of that pair returning to power.

Sadly, this is likely not hyperbole, but a portrait of man who suffers pyschosomatic illnesses over the thought of something he intellectually knows is nigh-impossible.

What Sullivan fears from the Clintons is not political — he believes that “the substantive legacy of the Clinton administration (with a lot of assist from Newt Gingrich) was a perfectly respectable one.”  No, what Sullivan fears — without a trace of self-awareness — is the the Clintons’ psychodramas.

Just as striking are Sullivan’s two primary examples — the Paula Jones lawsuit and Whitewater.  Sullivan notes in each case that Bill or Hillary could have nipped each of these controversies in the bud, but chose not to, because “they live to risk.”

It is a striking observation in no small part because Sullivan, in throes of adulation for Barack Obama, does not see that Obama is doing the exact same thing when he stalks out of a press conference after eight questions about supposedly minor controversies:

“Guys, I mean come on. I just answered like eight questions.”

With those few words, Barack Obama ended a Texas news conference where he had come under tough questioning about influence peddler Tony Rezko from Sun-Times columnists Carol Marin and Lynn Sweet and CBS2 reporter Mike Flannery. In fact, Obama dodged the questions.

Try to imagine President Bush, fleeing questions coming at him fast and furious over a controversy, closing a news conference by saying, “Come on, I just answered like eight questions.” Democrats in Congress and liberal interest groups would be shouting coverup. The editorial pages of the national newspapers would be thundering outrage. The late night comedians and left-wing blogs would be heaping ridicule on him…

Instead of seeing what is right in front of his eyes, the competing emotions of Clinton fear and Obama love cause Sullivan to mislead his readers on the effect each candidate would have on a general election:

When you look at the electoral map if the Clintons run again, you also see a reversion to the old patterns of the 1990s – the patterns that cynical political strategists such as Karl Rove and Dick Morris have been exploiting for two decades. The country – scrambled by the post-baby-boomer pragmatism of Obama – snaps back into classic red-blue mode, with the blue areas denoting Democratic-leaning states around the edge and true red Republican states in the heartlands.

This is pure pap.  While Obama currently seems like a stronger candidate than Clinton, when you look at the electoral maps for both Clinton and Obama, the differences are negligible, amounting to a difference of four electoral votes.  Neither of those maps looks significantly different than the map from 2004.  Obama is slightly stronger in the Mountain and Western states, but Democrats have long thought this is where they had a chance to make gains on the map.  Obama can claim that he will redraw the political map by increasing black turnout to make the South competitive, but today, Tom Schallert explains for the thousandth time why that claim is also pap.

Presumably, the Times of London is paying Sullivan to do political analysis.  Instead, they got a column more about his his own fear and loathing of the Clintons and his Obama love than a reasoned evaluation of the Democratic presidential campaign.  If the Times wants to pay for Sullivan’s primal scream therapy, they could do so directly.  It would save both of them a measure of embarrassment.