In a Thursday column in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger wrote that the problem with President Barack Obama’s 2010 signature health care legislation is that it’s an antiquated means to attack the issue.
Henninger’s point of view was offered up on Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC by host Joe Scarborough during the show’s “Must Read Op-Eds” segment. However, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, also the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, dismissed op-eds completely, except for those written by two New York Times columnists: Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman.
SCARBOROUGH: Howard Dean, respond to that. I know there are a lot of things you personally don’t like about this legislation. You don’t think the Democrats handled it correctly. But I take it that you don’t agree with everything that Daniel Henninger wrote here?
DEAN: I generally don’t bother to respond to the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal with good reason.
SCARBOROUGH: You dismiss every editorial that’s in the — really?
DEAN: I do.
SCARBOROUGH: How exactly do you do that? Does that mean I should not read the editorial page of The New York Times?
DEAN: I usually don’t read that either except for Kristof and Krugman.
SCARBOROUGH: What do you read in the morning? Cartoons?
DEAN: No, I actually read the news but that’s not news and it’s opinion that is silly. That was a silly thing to write.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, so glad we came to you for the must-read opinion pages.
After Dean sort of responded to the substance of Henninger’s piece, Scarborough took another shot at Dean for dismissing the value of opinion writing.
“Alright, Kelly O’Donnell on Capitol Hill, let’s go to you and let’s read you now a must-read opinion page that you do not read yourself because you think the entire newspaper is silly,” Scarborough said.