Chris Wallace Holds His Own 'Rally to Restore Sanity' This Morning

You know it’s an interview with Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, when the first words uttered are, “Why are you such a jerk?”
 
Wallace’s query was prompted by Imus’s tardiness this morning; originally scheduled for a 7:30am interview, Wallace did not hit the airwaves until 7:40am. Attempting to get to Wallace on time, Bernard had rushed his Bernie Briefing, to the I-Man’s displeasure.
 
“If you want him to take his time, why don’t you be on time yourself?” Wallace asked the host of this show. “So that he gets to do his Briefing at the appropriate time, so that he is able to get to me on time?”
 
Along those lines, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will host The Rally to Restore Sanity on the Mall in Washington, DC this weekend, and even though it’s not technically a political event, Imus believes many of the attendees will view it as such anyway. “We’re on the verge of jumping the shark here,” he told Wallace, who laughed at how long Imus took to set up—and then answer—his own question.
 
“I think it has the possibility in about hour one for people both on the stage and in the audience to think, ‘What are we doing here? What’s this about?’” Wallace said. “It’s an awfully long time to have a faux rally.”
 
Imus suspected Wallace was right, then bragged that Bill O’Reilly, who has yet to appear on Fox News Sunday, will be a guest with Imus every Tuesday until the end of the year.
 
“He wants to help his old friend, The I-Man,” Imus said. “And he did mention something about ‘Pinheads and Patriots.’”
 
As the 2010 election season draws to a close, Wallace is ready for what comes next. “The campaign has gotten, at least to me, to be kind of boring,” he said. The story after the election, on the other hand, “is going to be fascinating,” he added.
 
Whether the Democrats “pull a rabbit out of a hat,” as Wallace put it, to retain control; or the Republicans destroy the Democrats; or the Tea Party ascends to create a struggle within the Republican Party; it’s “a great story,” Wallace said. He added, “I wish we were at November 3^rd already.”
 
He predicted Republicans will take the House, but was hesitant to enumerate how many seats they’ll gain. And unless Republicans “draw to an inside straight,” Wallace believes the Senate will remain in the hands of the Democrats, even though Karl Rove thinks it will be a close call.
 
“So you’re saying, essentially, Karl Rove doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about?” Imus said, and noted that Rove, unlike political strategist Dick Morris, never “crawled around in a hotel room wearing a dog collar with a hooker.”

For a change, Wallace actually knew who would be on his program this Sunday: Sarah Palin, who “really saw the Tea Party early on, and identified with it when it wasn’t nearly as clear that it was going to be successful,” he said.
 
Imus’s analysis: “I know people like her. But man—that voice.”
 
-Julie Kanfer