I've been intrigued by this story. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air had some good thoughts on it.

One doesn't make points at all about bipartisanship by explicitly attacking another partisan voice, no matter how much one disagrees with it. By naming Rush and attempting to sideline him, Obama lifted Rush's profile and practically anointed him his opposition. It demonstrates that Obama still has no sense of his office, nor of "post-partisanship", regardless of his endlessly empty rhetoric on the subject.

George Bush never attacked Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, or other voices of the rabid Left by name. If he ever went on the attack against the left-wing media, he kept the attack general and broad, rather than specific. Bush may not have been the most media-savvy of our modern presidents -- in fact, he may have been the worst at it since Nixon -- but he knew enough about his office to understand that part of its strength would keep him somewhat above the partisan-pundit fray. Obama hasn't figured that much out yet.

If your stature is greater than your opponent's, it's never a good strategy to mention him by name. This is why incumbents call challengers "my opponent," and challengers mention incumbents by name. It's not in the President's interest to single out a radio host/pundit for criticism like this. I'd wager that this is a lesson learned for Obama and his administration.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton said this in Ames, Iowa:

If people are encouraging conduct that will undermine the fabric of this country, it should be spoken against whether it comes from the left or the right, whether it comes on radio, television or the movies, whether it comes in the schoolyard, or, yes, even on the college campus. The answer to hateful speech is to speak out against it in the American spirit, to speak up for freedom and responsibility.

Talk radio hosts around the nation took this personally. By this point in his presidency, the opposition to the Clinton presidency had already exerted itself, taking over the House and Senate, but this further inflamed it. Coming from an average citizen, or even a congressman or senator, these words would have carried little weight - but coming from the President, they created a firestorm.

I think this was probably little more than an unfortunate slip-up by the new President, who is still learning just how special the office is. Nevertheless, it was politically unfortunate, given that he has been trying to demobilize the opposition. He had inserted some conservative remarks into his inauguration address, he attended that dinner with conservative intellectuals, and so on. Additionally, the ceremony of the inauguration - wherein the President is presented as the leader of the entire country - can demobilize the opposition, especially when they lose by seven points. A knock on Limbaugh is counter-productive. Republicans have seemed to me to have been particularly dispirited in the last few weeks, and this might give them some pep.

This little episode points to a broader issue that I've been wondering about for some time - how long Obama will be able to sustain this post-partisan idea? George W. Bush tried unsuccessfully to cultivate that notion. It's always seemed to me like a short-sighted political gambit. It sounds nice during a campaign, but the political divisions in this country are real - and when it comes time to govern, they're bound to manifest themselves. In fact, it seems to me that the post-partisan pitch could actually arouse greater partisanship in the opposition. If a candidate promises to change the tone, doesn't this give the opposition control over whether he keeps his promise, and therefore an incentive to be disagreeable? I've long thought that Bush fell into this trap, and Obama - by virtue of his post-partisan campaign rhetoric - runs the risk of doing the same.

Of course, what could explode this post-partisan idea is a party line vote on the stimulus bill, which might be the direction we're headed in.