David Brooks is bummed:

I must say this has been a tough week for those of us who personally admire President Obama and his advisers. … [M]y general rule is that if the president and his advisers are going to accuse somebody of committing a crime, they should have some scintilla of evidence behind the charge. Yet Obama seems to have precisely none behind his accusation that the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to influence the elections.

Brooks seems amazed that the high-minded Obama would stoop to such tactics: “[I]t is depressing to see Obama and others going off on this jag. There must be other ways of firing up the Democratic base. Is there no substantive issue they can talk about?” Umm, no. But had Brooks been paying closer attention, or been less enthralled with the president and his advisers, he would have noticed that playing fast and loose with the facts and vilifying the opposition is pretty much par for the course.

Brooks is appalled that the White House is “getting mentally captured by the lefty blogosphere.” Again, perhaps he missed the trend. It was the White House that made Rush Limbaugh into a bogeyman. And then Fox. And then Wall Street. Who but the White House and the lefty blogosphere cheered the building of the Ground Zero mosque? The president and the leftist activists have been joined at the hip for some time now. That, if you recall, was the Journolist scandal — faux journalists working in concert with a hyper-partisan White House.

Brooks also seems amazed that Obama is exhibiting none of the political smarts evident in his campaign. He seems — oh, my! — to be acting like Keith Olbermann. “Declaring war on the Chamber of Commerce may be a good idea for somebody hosting a show on MSNBC, but there are chambers in towns across America.” In other words, what is wrong with this guy?

The myth that Obama was a fact-driven moderate was shattered for many Americans months ago. But apparently, many in the punditocracy are only now coming to terms with a president whose maturity, political judgment, and competence were badly oversold. Oversold by these very same pundits, of course.