Jon Meacham is no conservative. The Pulitzer-winning historian is, after all, a former editor of Time and Newsweek. Which makes his declaration about President Obama that much more damning.
Asked on today's Morning Joe for a historical analogy to Barack Obama, Meacham harkened back to Jimmy Carter: "three years into his administration, [Carter] giving a speech about this very subject, saying that there was a crisis of the American spirit . . . And a lot of people thought that there wasn't a crisis in the American spirit, there was a crisis in the American presidency. And I think that's the analogy that comes to my mind."
Barack Obama: President Malaise the Second. Yeah, that about sums it up.
Note: after her stunning comments of yesterday, in which she came close to backing Trump's Muslim, ban, Mika Brzezinski transformed this morning into a feisty defender of President Obama. #whocalledfromtheWhiteHouse?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Jon Meacham, help me out here. We need an historical precedent. And it sounds ideological but it's not. I mean, you look at these numbers and you can see almost six in 10 Americans disapprove of the way the president's handling the war on terror. He says that ISIS is a JV team. 70% of Americans say they pose a great threat. He says ISIS is not contained --
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: -- is.
JOE: -- is contained. His Secretary of Defense goes on the Hill and says ISIS is not contained. His White House says right after Paris ISIS can't strike in America. ISIS does strike in America and then he goes on Sunday night and gives a rambling address that leaves even Democrats scratching their heads. Is there a precedent for a Commander-in-Chief as disconnected from his people as what we're seeing right now?
JON MEACHAM: Well, all analogies are imprecise, but this is the closest thing I can think of, which is, this feels a little bit like the late 1970s, where you had a president, you had a kind of unravelling economically and given the projection of American strength abroad. There was difficulty, obviously, in a post-Watergate, in the Carter years. There was some anxiety about American power and you had the President of the United States, three years into his administration, giving a speech about this very subject, saying that there was a crisis of the American spirit.
JOE: Right. The malaise, the malaise speech.
MEACHAM: And a lot of people thought that there wasn't a crisis in the American spirit, there was a crisis in the American presidency. And I think that's the analogy that comes to my mind, where you have people who are incredibly concerned and they don't feel the president is fully invested in their concerns.
