Behavior Unworthy of His Office

There's plenty that doesn't smell right about the Obama presidency -- the czars, the lack of transparency, the willingness to use taxpayer money for political ends. But nothing -- nothing -- is worse than this president's unprecedented penchant for using his bully pulpit to attack specific individuals (or small groups of individuals) whose only "sin" is that they disagree with him.

Kimberly Strassel sets out the latest example: The President is singling out and smearing a group of high-net-worth Romney donors -- private citizens! -- characterizing many of them for having "less than reputable records."

(Of course, the Koch brothers -- also private citizens -- are used to this treatment; they have already been demonized by the Obama campaign.)

What President Obama is doing is an obvious attempt to chill (constitutionally protected) expressions of support for Romney -- so unworthy of his office as to be an abuse of it.

The president has already the president has already publicly attacked Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist by name in the past few days. Without naming them, he's distorted statements from both Congressman Todd Akin and Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, in a way calculated to raise public fury at them -- and who can forget his effort to "name and shame" the justices of the Supreme Court at the 2010 State of the Union address?

Such bullying is repugnant, and resorting to it shows the President to be temperamentally unfit to hold the highest, most powerful office in the land. Voters thought they were electing a statesman, and got an intemperate community organizer instead.