Personally, I think Edge and Christian both work better as heels. As a longtime critic of Orton, I think the face push has worked for 2 reasons: he developed his character a bit more since the first face run (2004?) and as a face he can let the heel do some more of the work in the ring and that lessens the effect of the dreaded chinlock.
The spear thing is kind of dumb; maybe they should let him go back to the impaler dvd as finisher.