Imus Explains Some Fundamentals to Chris Wallace

Fresh off an Imus diatribe about people who no longer appear on this show, "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace told Imus he should, essentially, love the one he's with.

"That's a good idea," Imus said, who asked if Wallace had eaten any meatloaf with his dad lately. Sensing trouble, Wallace wondered in what direction the I-Man was headed.

"Don't eat the entire meatloaf," was Imus's advice for Wallace, who could hardly believe what he was hearing.

"You get me on ten minutes late, you sit there and complain about all the people who won't come on your show, and now you're telling me I'm a fatboy?" he asked.

Imus apologized for his insensitive remark, and also for having shown a graphic last week in which tiny arrows pointed to the various chins on Wallace's face.

Moving on, mercifully, the two got serious discussing Republican Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts. Wallace cited someone who called it an "un-spinnable" event.

"[It's] too big, too dramatic, too obvious," he said of the implications of Brown's victory. "And yet, the White House is trying to spin this."

Obama told George Stephanopoulos yesterday that the same anger that swept him into office is what swept Brown into office, which made Wallace chuckle. "They're trying to act like it's some kind of inchoate, unreasoning anger out there," he said.

Brown campaigned on many issues — big taxes, big government, and trying terrorists as enemy combatants — that are specific to the Obama administration. "People see Barack Obama as part of the problem, no longer as part of the solution," said Wallace.

As for where Obama has gone wrong, it certainly isn't a lack of accessibility: he gave 153 interviews and spoke to the American people, either by comment or by speech, more than 400 times. Yet he claimed his administration did not effectively "persuade and explain" its policies — like health care reform and the stimulus package — to Americans.

"People completely understand how this relates to their lives," said Wallace. "And at this point, they don't like it."

At the I-Man's recommendation, Wallace read the book "Game Change," and was blown away by the Edwards family soap opera. Imus observed that the same could be said about the McCains, with whom Wallace was unwilling to jump ugly.

"Do you want to be fair and balanced, or not?" Imus asked his guest, who hemmed and hawed. "The answer to that question is 'yes,' Chris. The answer to meatloaf is, 'no.'"

-Julie Kanfer