By Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's stand against Fox News and others viewed as hostile to his administration is being roundly derided as "Nixonian" by critics that include political pundits, journalists and legislators who remember Richard Nixon's paranoid and divisive presidency.

Longtime Republican Lamar Alexander, who once worked as an aide to Nixon, took to the Senate floor last week to draw ominous comparisons between Obama administration tactics and those of his former boss.

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas has railed against attempts by White House officials to control the media, saying their efforts have been more aggressive than they were in the years when she covered the Nixon administration.

And the mainstream media, even those organizations considered Obama-friendly, have widely criticized the White House for its war against Fox, citing the Nixon years.

For a man whose political idol is Abraham Lincoln, comparisons to one of the most despised presidents in U.S. history must surely pain Obama.

Many observers say he's left himself vulnerable to such criticism after he campaigned for president vowing to do things differently in Washington by ending partisan bickering and healing political divisions. Others argue it's grossly unfair to compare his administration's combative response to its critics to Nixon, a man who resigned in disgrace in the midst of the Watergate wire-tapping scandal.

"To say that this is Nixonian? Trust me, it is not Nixonian," Jane Hall, a contributor to Fox News for more than a decade, said on CNN on Sunday.

Fox News has, in fact, been conducting "a campaign to say Obama was a socialist, a communist, a racist on news programs as well as on commentary," she said.

But Dr. Luke Nichter, a noted Nixon historian, says the comparisons between the two administrations are growing increasingly apt.

"The similarities to 35 years ago are striking," Nichter said Sunday.

"To an extent, all administrations carry on rivalries with the press. However, the rivalry became a war during the Nixon years, by creating an actual 'enemies list' of individuals who were to be denied invitations, favours, and general access to the White House. With the Obama administration, we are reminded that history can repeat itself, even when we are talking about the extreme measures taken during the Nixon era."

Nichter, who's working on a book on Nixon and his relations with Europe, runs the nixontapes.org website. He's pored over hours of taped conversations listening to the disgraced Republican president fume and fulminate over his political and journalistic foes from the Oval Office in the 1970s.

It's difficult to imagine Obama, by all accounts a thoughtful and measured leader in private, ranting in a similarly bilious fashion.

But Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, is a storied, bare-knuckled political scrapper who once mailed a rotting fish to a pollster who irked him. Most D.C. insiders suspect his fingerprints on an apparent White House strategy to demonize its enemies, which include not just Fox but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and insurance companies.

Still, those efforts arguably pale in comparison to Nixon's, who had the Washington Post in his crosshairs as reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein painstakingly zeroed in on his personal involvement in the wiretapping of Democrats at D.C.'s Watergate complex.

Nixon issued threats, tinkered with the Post's FCC television licence renewals and tried to engineer a takeover. John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general, once famously shrieked at Woodward that Post publisher "Katie Graham is going to get her tit caught in a big, fat wringer" if the digging into the scandal continued.

Even Pat Buchanan, a onetime Nixon aide, has scoffed at the parallels being drawn between Obama and Nixon.

"It is the most idiotic comparison I've ever seen," Buchanan said recently.

"Barack Obama won 95 per cent of Washington, D.C, he comes in with both houses Congress behind him, the media love him, the country loves him. Nixon came in with both houses of Congress against him, he probably got eight per cent of the vote in Washington, D.C, the media loathed him. a Barack Obama's got enormous press support; he's got problems with Fox News but for heaven's sakes, there is no comparison here."

Ken Rudin, the political editor at National Public Radio, apologized for making the "boneheaded" link during an on-air discussion last week.

"Comparing the tactics of the Nixon administration - which bugged and intimidated and harrassed journalists - to that of the Obama administration was foolish, facile, ridiculous and, ultimately, embarrassing to me," he said. "I should have known better and, in fact, I do know better. I was around during the Nixon years. I am fully cognizant of what they did and attempted to do."

Even Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee senator who warned about Obama's apparently Nixonian tendencies, has been chided in recent days. Walter Shapiro, a columnist at the Politics Daily blog, noted that as early as 1969 - years before Watergate - Alexander was advised not to work for Nixon in order to avoid being tainted by corruption.

"The Nixon enemies list was an ethical low point for the presidency, not because of the names themselves but because of the illegal punishments like punitive tax audits that were sometimes used against them," he wrote.

"It is a distinction between carrying a grudge and committing a crime. And more than almost anyone, Lamar Alexander - who early on sensed the tenor of the Nixon White House - should know the difference."

In a decidedly un-Nixonian move, Emanuel seems to be waving something of a white flag - he'll address a dinner Nov. 4 for the leaders of the chamber, who are livid at the White House for its big spending and health-care policies.

"We appreciate the chamber reaching out to the White House," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement Saturday. "While we have big disagreements on issues like energy and financial regulatory reform, we want to work together on areas where there is agreement like creating jobs."