E.J. Dionne Jr.’s column Monday analyzed Barack Obama, his presidency and his ideology, and it stoked a partisan and occasionally unseemly battle among our Readers Who Comment. Many of them focused on Dionne’s statement that, “[a]s the first African American in the White House, he has won an unprecedented level of support among black Americans and the goodwill of enough white Americans to build a national majority. Yet it’s undeniable that racism lurks beneath so many of the preposterously false charges against him.”

A number of the comments can be described only as racist, while others reflected partisan political positions on the subjects that occupy much American thought these days.