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Obama to Appear on 'Fox News Sunday'
Chris Wallace must have some important questions for Barack Obama. After all, the “Fox News Sunday” host has had 769 days to dream them up.

“Fox News Sunday” has a weekly countdown clock. Five weeks after Mr. Wallace introduced “Obama Watch,” a weekly countdown clock marking the number of days since he said Mr. Obama had committed to an interview, the Fox News Channel announced Thursday that the Democratic presidential candidate would appear on its Sunday morning public affairs show this weekend.

In an interview, Mr. Wallace said Mr. Obama had agreed to an interview in March 2006, but had not followed through. “We had been trying very quietly for the intervening two years to try to get him to come on,” he said. “Eventually I came to the feeling that we were being played. They were saying ‘we are going to do it,’ ‘we absolutely intend to do it,’ and they weren’t doing it.”

So Fox found a visible way to push for an interview: an “Obama Watch” graphic, complete with the tick-tock sound and split-screen effect used on the Fox counterterrorism drama “24.” It debuted on March 16 at “730 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes, and 18 seconds.” Every week since, he has reminded the audience of the standing invitation to Mr. Obama.

So did it have an effect? Mr. Wallace said the conversations about an interview became more serious after the “Obama Watch” started, but he added: “In the end, they don’t do it for us. They do it for themselves. I think his defeats in Ohio and Pennsylvania have convinced them that he needs to reach out to blue collar, moderate and conservative Democratic voters, and ‘Fox News Sunday’ is a good place to reach them.”

Mr. Wallace will tape the interview with Mr. Obama in Indiana Saturday afternoon. He promised a “tough, probing but fair interview.”

“Fox News Sunday” is shown on Fox broadcast affiliates on Sunday mornings and repeated on the cable channel in the evening. Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on the broadcast in February and John McCain appeared earlier this month. An Obama spokesman did not immediately reply to an e-mail request for comment.
Posted by: Fred 2008-04-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=237536