Peter Wehner on the President’s War on Fox News:

One of the attractions of Obama during the election — one of his attractions to me, who wrote favorably about him several times — was his tone and countenance, his apparent interest in a serious engagement with issues, and his professed allergy to politics practiced by those who are bitter and brittle. We should, he said, “resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” He went on to say, “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.” All impressive and high-minded sentiments. And all, apparently, a ruse.

Read the whole thing.

But before you do, I’ll add my two cents. Even if Obama’s “allergy” wasn’t a ruse, his turn to Nixonian tactics might have been inevitable. When your policies are hyperpartisan, at some point you’re going to need tactics to match. Which brings us to Peggy Noonan. Here’s the takeaway sentence from her WSJ column this morning:

Republicans would best heed this as they gear up for 2010: Don’t hit him, hit his policies.

That’s why none of the Ayers stuff worked in 2008, and is unlikely to work in 2010. That cool exterior, that “allergy” described by Wehner — nobody is buying that the President is a wild-eyed radical. Oh, he’s pretty radical, all right. But he’s very, very cool about it. He’s the kind of radical people wouldn’t mind having as “just a guy in the neighborhood.”

Go after the policies. They’re losers. Obama is, for now at least, still a winner.

Although by 2012, I expect Fox News to be much more popular than the President.