Obama promised a new kind of politics, a politics of unity that would reject the divisiveness and cutter-politics of the past. I never bought Obama’s words and he has already born out my initial skepticism.

Obama’s has not been above petty politics, and he has betrayed his own supporters by compromising on or ignoring their issues after rising their expectations (and they’re to blame here too) to extraordinary levels.

Obama is not a bad president, he is just normal. And normal means Chicago-style, Obama should know, politics. Most politicians seek to undercut their enemies through hardball tactics instead of an open debate whereby they can professional discredit them, if their ideas are as good as they claim. But ideas born from politicians are really as good as claimed, so spinning and cutter-politics is needed to pass one’s agenda.

And so that is what “hope” and “change” Obama is doing now. Nothing represents the worst of Americans politics more than President Richard Nixon’s infamous “Enemies’ List”. The sheer existence of the list spoke to Nixon’s take-no-prison tactics and pettiness since many journalists, as opposed to exclusively political rivals, found themselves on the list. Nixon wanted to punish anyone who stood in the way of his agenda. And Obama is emulating “Tricky Dick”:

President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.

With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News.

Obama aides are using their powerful White House platform, combined with techniques honed in the 2008 campaign, to cast some of the most powerful adversaries as out of the mainstream and their criticism as unworthy of serious discussion.

Obama is behaving no different than Bush whom also employed thuggish tactics in an effort to marginalize anyone critical as “outside the mainstream.” Bush had the Dixie Chicks to smear will Obama wants Fox News.

This was the man who was supposed to change Washington? In 2000, George Bush also came to Washington claiming to want to change the partisan tone. With such imitation Obama may leave Washington equally divided and bitter. With so much going on - Afghanistan, health care, high unemployment, ect... - it is incredible that the Obama team would even dedicate meetings and efforts to such a Nixonian scheme.