Brit Hume: Obama's Speech Should Kill Notion Held By His Admirers in the Press That He's a Centrist

Brit Hume had some harsh words for America's Obama-loving media Monday.

Appearing on Fox News's Special Report, Hume said, "[The President's] inaugural speech should put to rest for all time the notion much favored by his admirers in the press that he is a centrist. He is not" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

BRIT HUME: President Obama today gave the country a clarifying moment. We may not have gotten to know Mr. Obama, the man, better today, but we certainly got to know him the politician better. His inaugural speech should put to rest for all time the notion much favored by his admirers in the press that he is a centrist. He is not. He looked out to his west today across a country still suffering the after effects of a severe recession and said only that a recovery had begun. And his prescription for accelerating that anemic recovery? None was heard.

He barely mentioned the national debt up about 60 percent since he took office, and then only as a prelude to defending the three great drivers of that debt: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He did call it quote “fiction” that all societies' ills could be cured through government alone, but that was just a prelude to wonders of collective action by which he unmistakably meant government action on gay rights, climate change, voter suppression, immigration reform, and obliquely gun control. Only by saying he would support the spread of democracy worldwide, which is the George W. Bush freedom agenda, and by failing to swear off the use of drone attacks did he say anything likely to disappoint the base on the left.

The president clearly is a man of the left, and after today, his few departures from its orthodoxy should fool no one.

"Should" is the operative word here, for it seems a metaphysical certitude that Obama's fans in the media aren't going to change their tune concerning this president's supposed "centrism" regardless of what he says or does.

That would be too much like journalism for today's liberal activists paid handsomely to - in theory anyway - report the news to the American people.

If they had accurately and impartially done so the last four years, there likely would have been a different man giving that inaugural address today.