Politics: Is Obama becoming ‘Nixonian’?

So much for the “post-partisan’ president,” said Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. Like every occupant of the White House before him, President Obama has a right, even a duty, to “debate and criticize opposition voices.” But Obama’s recent attempts to “marginalize and ostracize” critics call to mind one particular predecessor: Richard M. Nixon. First there was the bizarre, self-declared war on Fox News. Then came attacks on the motives of health-insurance companies. Now the administration insists that the venerable U.S. Chamber of Commerce no longer speaks for the business community. It’s as if Obama has his own version of Nixon’s infamous “enemies list” and is out to “undermine, delegitimize, and destroy” any dissent. As somebody who worked for and then was appalled by President Nixon, said Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander in the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press, I don’t employ phrases like “enemies list” lightly. But “I have an uneasy feeling that we’re beginning to see the symptoms of this same kind of animus developing.”

Then you must have forgotten just how noxious Nixon’s tactics really were, said Steve Benen in WashingtonMonthly.com. The problem with Nixon was less that he kept an “enemies list” than that he used the power of the federal government to “try to destroy” the people on it, including journalists who dared to question his honesty. Obama is merely responding promptly to critics of his policies and calling out those who spread falsehoods about them. If that’s “Nixonian,”

then we are really “defining Nixonian down.” Sooner or later, all presidents have “enemies,” said Walter Shapiro in Politicsdaily.com. But when Nixon tried to use the FBI, the IRS, and other agencies against them, he took the presidency to a new low. He would have gone to jail were he not pardoned. “You better have strong evidence of criminal wrongdoing if you are going to play the Nixon card.”

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The Nixon comparison is certainly a stretch, said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. But there has been something petty and vindictive about the White House’s recent handling of its critics—especially the attempted freeze-out of Fox News. Obama’s flair for the speedy, well-placed counterpunch proved invaluable on the campaign trail, but a president—especially this president—is supposed to be above all that. Obama “doesn’t have to cave in to his adversaries,” and of course he’s entitled to fight back. But it’s fair to ask what happened to the man who promised to “bridge Washington’s culture wars, not fire them up.”