During this same interview, Rangel was attributing the deficit problems with the tax cuts for the wealthy. Then later he said he wants to redistribute them which would mean by logical extension that the financial problems that Rangel was attributing to the tax cut would not be solved - thus destroying his previous assertions. Chris Wallace has no follow up to this contridiction.
Having followed Wallace closely for these past 4 weeks, I conclude the following:
1. Wallace does prepare upfront and asks some decent questions but he is unable to follow-up effectively. He does try to occasionally challenge but only within the narrow context of his prepared questions. His ability to engage on the fly is poor. Most interviewers have this problem so Wallace is not relatively poor to his profession.
2. Wallace's ability to get worthwhile comments from his guests is dubious. I include the famous Clinton interview in that. Wallace did have a good journalistic intent to get the right questions but he fell prey to Clinton's tirade (which I believe was planned). Clinton's behavior was the story as opposed to the information gleaned from the interview.
3. Having opposing party representatives interviewed at the same time is almost universally miserably handled by the LSM. While it is largely due to the fact that even when challenging responses (which are more often not done), almost all interviewers allow the guests to slither away with a non responsive answer. Wallace is more hostage to his prepared question agenda rather than on obtaining effective responses.
This week, I initially had the feeling that it was not a notable week, either positive or negative, for Wallace.
I credit his preparation and wanting to do a meaningful interview, however, he is no Tony Snow or Brit Hume. He is not even as good as Russert (although he shows less bias).
This concludes my 4 week analysis of Chris Wallace.
Wallace comes on WABC radio once a week to discuss his upcoming show. When asked a question about a particular current event, he always says he knows nothing about it, he'll have to ask his staff. My guess is that someone else does his show prep. Prepares the questions and he is not informed enough or intelligent enough to process the answer from the guest to enable him to ask a followup question.