Chris Wallace Took Baylor In His Final 4

No, Chris Wallace, Imus does not care that you are tired because you went to some inside-the-Beltway black tie press dinner last night where an unfunny comedian made jokes about the Vice President.

“You remember those dinners, Don?” asked Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday. “It was one of the many places you blew up your career for a while.”

Referring to Imus’s 1996 performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, which some people found hilarious, and others (like President Bill Clinton) did not, Wallace was inaccurate in his assessment.

“That helped me!” Imus told Wallace. “I wish you’d have been there, but unfortunately you didn’t have a job in those days.”

But he has a job now, and as such is qualified to observe that Rep. Dennis Kucinich probably changed his vote on the health care bill to a yes because, “Even if you’re not crazy about every part, even if it doesn’t have the public option: do you want to be the person who sinks health care reform?”

Despite polls indicating that a substantial number of Americans don’t want this or any health care reform, Wallace said a top pollster for the President pointed out that some of those respondents are in fact liberals who are unhappy because they want more done.

As for whether passing this bill will severely impact Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, Wallace said, “We’re in March, and November is a long time from now.” More emphasis will likely be placed on the economy at that point, he said, if unemployment is still at 9.7 percent.

Also, the Obama administration can change the narrative on health care reform because some of the health care bill’s more favorable measures—extra money for seniors for prescription drug benefits, for instance—will go into effect over the next six months.

The only thing Imus took away from that observation was Wallace’s overuse of the word “narrative,” which has recently come into vogue. “You used it twice,” Imus said, though Wallace begged to differ.  

They agreed, however, that Fox’s Bret Baier conducted a contentious interview with President Obama last night. “The President does like to give ‘complete’ answers,” said Wallace. “Bret kept interrupting him.”

At Wallace’s suggestion that Imus watch the interview later, Imus said, “Yeah, that sounds like what I’ll do later rather than watch the March Madness basketball.”

Wallace disclosed his gutsy Final Four (Kansas, Kansas State, West Virignia, Baylor), and when Imus began to share his, Wallace said simply, “I don’t care.”

He also doesn’t care this his quail-hunting buddy Karl Rove used his memoir to misquote stuff Imus said about him. “If he can’t be accurate about me, what can he be accurate about?” Imus wondered. “That’s what you want to ask yourself, Chris. There’s your ‘narrative.’”

-Julie Kanfer