Imus Welcomes Bob Beckel to the (Very Dysfunctional) Club of "Imus in the Morning" Guests

Today was his maiden voyage on the Imus in the Morning program, but as a Fox News analyst for more than six years, Bob Beckel’s no stranger to the airwaves. “I used to be at CNN,” he explained to Imus. “And then when my mother died, that was the end of the last person to watch it.”
 
He subsequently accepted Roger Ailes’s offer to work in the “belly of the beast” as one of few liberals at Fox News, where, he said, “If I don’t get 50 hate e-mails a day, I’m not doing my job.”
 
His housekeeper was definitely doing her job recently, when Beckel arrived home and noticed a garbage can full of brand new bottles of cleaning products. “She said, ‘I’m putting all new cleaning products in here,’” Beckel recalled. “She said, ‘Not only that, we’re not having any friend chicken anymore. Deirdre Imus said we can’t do it.’”
 
Thanks to Deirdre, Beckel proudly declred he’s been without fried chicken for two months, to which Imus, feeling comfortable with his new friend, replied, “It looks like you’re getting it somewhere, Bob.”
 
But Imus and Beckel have more in common than avoiding fried chicken: both are recovering alcoholics with a particular fondness for vodka. “There are so many nights I don’t remember,” Beckel admitted. “I used to get up in the morning and look out my window carefully at the grill of my car to make sure there was nobody on it.”
 
He also used to get up in the morning and appear on The Today Show, drunk, and debate Ed Rollins, who was managing President Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign at the same time Beckel was managing Walter Mondale’s un-election campaign. “I couldn’t even remember what I said at all, I blacked out,” Beckel said. “I still can’t remember.”
 
Imus waxed nostalgic about the days he used to throw a bottle of 100-proof Stolichnaya vodka in the freezer, where it would get nice and syrupy and he could drink it right out of the bottle. “Then you ended up peeing in public phone booths, right?” asked Beckel, obviously an attentive listener of this program.
 
Beckel appears regularly on Hannity, and despite their disparate political views, the two men have become close friends. He has repeatedly attempted to break Sean Hannity’s staunch Republican views, but remains unsuccessful in that venture.
 
“I asked him the other day when the two of us were alone at dinner, ‘Do you really believe Michelle Bachmann could be a good president?’” Beckel said, and promised not to repeat it. “He looked me square in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’”
 
Hannity’s unwillingness to let his guard down has led Imus to believe he suspects people around him could be wearing a wire, lest he go off-message for even one second. Which, naturally, is something Imus has contemplated doing.
 
Thankfully, Imus has never contemplated running for president, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has decided he’ll do in 2012. “Here’s Gingrich’s problem,” Beckel said. “He’s a guy who’s never had an unspoken thought in his life.”
 
It’s been a long two years for Beckel at Fox, where he’s constantly called on to defend President Obama. “Some days I felt like the only fire hydrant at the Westminster dog show,” he said, allowing that things had gotten better since Bin Laden’s death.
 
With the 2012 presidential election on the horizon, Beckel predicated “a big player” will step up to claim the Republican nomination, and that it might not be former Govs. Pawlenty, Romney, or Hunstman, all of whom have expressed interest. If Beckel had his druthers, the Republican ticket would look slightly more insane.
 
“My own personal favorite would be a Santorum-Bachmann ticket,” he confessed. “I want to say publicly, as a Democrat, I’d be the first one to write a $1,000 check to the two of them.”
 
-Julie Kanfer