I’m going to start Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father pretty soon, so I thought this article, which examines how the senator’s admissions of past drug use might affect his presidential candidacy, was interesting.

Not so long ago, such blunt admissions would have led to a candidate’s undoing, and there is uneasiness in Democratic circles that Dreams from My Father will provide a blueprint for negative attacks.

Two decades ago, Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was forced to withdraw as a nominee for the Supreme Court after reports surfaced that he had used marijuana while he was a law professor. As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton thought marijuana use could be enough of a liability in 1992 that he felt compelled to say he had not inhaled.

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Presidential aspirants tend to write more sanitized books for use as campaign tools. Faith of My Fathers by Senator John McCain … depicts his family’s history of military service. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton … has reissued It Takes a Village, which offers her views about child-rearing in contemporary society. In fact, Obama’s latest book, The Audacity of Hope, lays out his policy positions.

But Dreams from My Father is not like that. Obama wrote the highly personal book when he was in his early thirties, after being approached by a publisher when he became the first black person elected editor of the Harvard Law Review.

“This is not the kind of book you would ever expect a politician to write,” said [Republican] consultant Alex Vogel. “Anyone who has a career in politics has to be concerned with what’s in their past, but there is no question that Americans have an appetite for redemption.”

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Obama’s partisan opponents and experts said it is too early to know whether the admissions will be a liability because the public seems to be enthusiastically embracing his openness at this point. What’s more, they note that it is better for a politician to disclose his own transgressions, rather than be put on the defensive by revelations.