Steve and Cokie Roberts, opinionPresidents usually turn to their secretaries of state for foreign-policy advice. But Barack Obama must have been channeling Hillary Clinton when he decided to attack Fox News.

It was Clinton, of course, who blamed her husband’s troubles during Monica Madness on a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Now White House communications director Anita Dunn is accusing Fox of operating as “a wing of the Republican Party.”

Every White House, in every age, has blamed the press for its problems. In 1798, at the urging of President John Adams, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it a crime to publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing.” Opposition editors were arrested, and their papers shuttered. Compared to Adams, even Richard Nixon, who kept an enemies list and wiretapped journalists, was a piker.

So Obama is no different than his predecessors when it comes to mauling the media. But that’s the problem. He said he WOULD be different. He would rise above the petty partisan bickering.

The White House has every reason to be frustrated and furious with Fox commentators like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly who specialize in half-truths and downright falsehoods about the president and his administration.

Clearly, Team Obama is following the same strategy they followed during the campaign — don’t be swift-boated, don’t let attacks go unchallenged, fight back. The White House is also worried that other media outlets will let the Fox blowhards set the agenda with their unrelenting and often unfounded assaults.

Still, the campaign against Fox makes little sense. For one thing, the White House is deliberately blurring the line between news shows and talk shows.

More to the point, Obama’s aides are sounding defensive and small-minded.

Strategy that works during a campaign does not always translate to the White House. Voters expect their politicians to be nasty and overheated. But they expect their presidents to be calm and dignified.

Team Obama was spoiled during the campaign by highly favorable press coverage that flummoxed their rivals (just ask Hillary). It benefited from what we have always believed is the most consistent bias in journalism: Reporters are in favor of a good story and against whoever is in power.

Once the election is over, however, the pattern shifts. The press tilts against the man who has gone from insurgent to insider; criticizing a president is a better story than praising him, and that’s a good thing. Every president has enormous ability to shape and control what the public  hears and sees; only an independent media can keep him honest and hold him accountable.

The White House should stop whining about a vast Fox wing conspiracy. It goes with the territory.

(Columnists Cokie and Steve Roberts write weekly commentary offering analysis of national and international issues. They can be contacted by e-mail at stevecokie@gmail.com.)