Clinton Doesn't, Kurtz Does

There is one way someone can believe that Fox News journalists don't ask Republicans tough questions--if you don't watch Fox. And Chris Wallace is the absolute last person on that network to be charged with a "little conservative hit job," in the words of the unbalanced Bill Clinton, whose calculated tirade* over the weekend followed softball sessions on the other networks.

In his Media Notes column today, Howard Kurtz quotes Wallace on this incident, just as we'd expect him to, but falls short in the reporting department. Clinton's chief conspiracy charge is that he's being asked questions that Wallace's puppet-masters haven't posed to Bush Administration officials. Kurtz:

Asked about Clinton's complaint, a Fox spokeswoman pointed to Wallace's interview two weeks ago with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Wallace pressed her about the lack of prewar ties between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but he did not ask about U.S. efforts against bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Carson [a Clinton spokesman] noted that the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole was officially linked to al-Qaeda after Bush took office.

But as Patterico has shown--and as I say, anyone who watches Fox regularly would consider unremarkable--Wallace has indeed asked about U.S. efforts against bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Patterico:

Here’s what Wallace asked Clinton today:

[H]indsight is 20 20 . . . but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

And here is what Wallace asked Donald Rumsfeld on the March 28, 2004 episode of Fox News Sunday:

I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt.  I mean — what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived. . . . pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

. . . .

What do you make of his [Richard Clarke’s] basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?

. . . .

Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.

Longer discussions about Clinton's actual record are abundant, including this one by NRO's Byron York. I'm sympathetic to Ed Morrissey's Can't We All Get Along vibe as far as pre-9/11 mistakes by Clinton and Bush is concerned, but if Clinton is going to ask us to examine the record, no problem.

*Update: Calculated or spontaneous anger, that is the question. I just happened to catch Chris Wallace on the Sean Hannity show, and as reported elsewhere, Wallace doesn't believe this was planned. But Wallace also said something new--two weeks ago DNC Chief Howard Dean told Wallace he was "tough but fair." This is an entertaining contrast to Dean's current statement characterizing Fox News as part of the right-wing propaganda machine. More here in a separate post.