During the 2008 presidential campaign, Dennis Miller responded to the Obama campaign’s obsession with race by saying: “I don’t even notice the color of his skin. I do notice the thinness of it, though.” Perhaps it is in his famous spirit of bipartisanship, but President Obama spends an awful lot of time and energy proving his critics right.

And he has done it again, with his new program designed to remind the American people they’re being monitored very carefully, AttackWatch. I don’t want to spend more time on this than it’s worth, and it’s not worth very much. But it really makes me wonder why the president–who as a candidate famously had 300 foreign policy advisers–doesn’t have a single person in the White House telling him just how disturbing this looks.

Not surprisingly, Twitter took a mallet repeatedly to AttackWatch. Many were funny, but Iowahawk’s tweet summed it up perfectly: “Dear #AttackWatch: 2008 called. It wants its creepy mindless cult of personality back.” ABC News also made the connection:

According to the site, Obama volunteers can also help campaign headquarters keep track of attacks on the president by submitting “reports” via mailform and tweeting about them using the Twitter hashtag #attackwatch.

The initiative is a throwback to a similar online effort launched by Team Obama during the 2008 campaign, called Fight the Smears.

But that was a senator running for office. As odd as it was then, he’s now the president. Who in the administration thinks this is the appropriate way for a president to act? We’ve heard countless references–from conservatives and liberals–to the administration of Richard Nixon. But in truth, Nixon had a better grasp on politics than Obama. Most of the hubristic overreaches that got Nixon in trouble were things he tried to hide. Obama is openly promoting a program to “report” on private citizens.

He’s also doing his eventual 2012 opponent a favor. Rick Perry is running on the theme the federal government is too powerful and too meddlesome. Mitt Romney is painting Obama as unprepared, amateurish, and out of touch. AttackWatch is all of the above.