Jon Meacham Claims This Was 'Never an Ideological White House,' Halperin Agrees

December 14th, 2010 7:36 AM

All you need to know about the MSM: two of its stalwarts don't think Barack Obama is a real liberal . . .

Time editor Mark Halperin, and Jon Meacham (until recently head Newsweek honcho) expressed--to the astonishment of Joe Scarborough--their fact-defying views on today's Morning Joe.

View video after the jump.



Consider the implications for a MSM so ideologically skewed itself that it doesn't see as a true liberal someone whose most-liberal-in-the-Senate voting record put him to the left of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, and who as president managed to put 1/7th of the nation's economy under the government's thumb.

JON MEACHAM: I think that, I continue to believe--and people don't agree with this--this was never an ideological White House.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh you're wrong.

MEACHAM: It just wasn't.  These was not, this were not.

SCARBOROUGH: So what was it?  Because they were the most progressive --

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: They were goal-oriented.

SCARBOROUGH: Despite what [left-wing] bloggers write, they were the most progressive administration since LBJ.

MEACHAM: Within the constraints that we've talked about, which is that the country is essentially center-right, yes they were progressive, but in context.  And I continue to believe that there was a very successful job on the part of the conservative opposition to cast the president as more radical than he was.

SCARBOROUGH: The president I believe is deeply, deeply ideological . . . But that's fascinating: you look at everything the president did over the last two years and you don't think he's ideological.

MEACHAM: I don't think he's a doctrinaire liberal.  I just don't.

When Joe later turned to Halperin, he got a similarly stunning answer.

SCARBOROUGH: You don't think he's ideological either?

MARK HALPERIN: I don't.

SCARBOROUGH: Really? I find this fascinating, two years later.

MEACHAM: If Halperin says it, I guess --

SCARBOROUGH: I mean, come on: Halperin is gunning for an Obama interview.  I mean, the last two weeks have been shameless.

HALPERIN: I just call it as I see it. I think you'll see next year, you will see the president prove to you that he's not a doctrinaire liberal.

MEACHAM: Ask Paul Krugman if he's a doctrinaire liberal, ask the --

SCARBOROUGH: Come on.

MEACHAM: No, that's not a "come-on."

SCARBOROUGH: Seriously, ask Paul Krugman, seriously, if Barney Frank is a liberal. He probably thinks Barney Frank's too conservative.