Chris Wallace Says Mean Things to Innocent Imus

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace doesn’t get all the uproar about President Obama’s announcement yesterday that the U.S. will start drilling for oil off the coast of Virginia. “I understand there were some terrible mistakes in the past,” he said. “But don’t you think the technology of oil drilling perhaps has improved over the last 20 years?”

Imus speculated that the hysteria emanating from the Left and the Right was premature, since it could take 10 to 12 years for any of this oil stuff to even come to fruition.

“And lord knows, I don’t think you’ll be around to see it,” Wallace said to a man battling prostate cancer. When Imus wished death back upon his guest, Wallace wondered what exactly the over-under would be on the I-Man’s life expectancy. “I know a studio full of people who’d like to bet the under,” he added.

Please forgive Wallace; he’s still a bit shaken after Cokie Roberts slapped him around, albeit a few weeks late, for his comment that he’d be lucky if Sarah Palin sat on his lap during an interview he did with her not long ago.

“You want to man up and strike back at Cokie?” Imus wondered. “Or you’re just going to roll over like a fat seal?”

Retorting with the somewhat predictable “You’re looking particularly cadaver-esque today,” Wallace went on to agree with Imus’s assertion that Obama has a bit of a spring in his step since his health care reform bill passed last weekend.

“Forget the policy,” said Wallace. “Just in terms of his credibility in this town, his standing in this town, passing that bill was a whole lot better than not passing that bill.”

A USA Today/Gallup poll released today indicated that 65 percent of Americans think most members of Congress don’t deserve to be reelected later this year, which Wallace said does not only mean Republicans will beat Democrats.

“I think in primaries you could well see challengers beating longtime incumbents, and it’s going to be in both parties,” he said, though he’s not convinced the Republicans can take over the House.

Coincidentally, this Sunday Wallace will chat with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who he called “the number two guy in the house,” a “young gun” charged with helping get Republicans elected in November and with designing a brand new “contract with America.”

“We don’t talk to number two people,” said Imus of this show’s strict guest policy. “But I guess you do.”

Now, for the most important question of the day: If Jesse James, Tiger Woods, and John Edwards were all drowning, which one would Wallace save?

“It’s obvious: Tiger Woods,” he said, obviously endorsing the shamed golfer’s behavior. “If he wins the Masters, there are going to be men all over America saying, ‘Yes!’”

-Julie Kanfer