Nice video of Ted Olson arguing for same-sex marriage in a Fox News interview:
Six-minute video. I am really pleased to have Olson on our side on this issue; he's articulate and compelling, and his conservative credentials are impeccable.
This interview makes my heart sing. If Chris Wallace were deliberately setting Olson up for one slam dunk after another (is he?), he could hardly do a better job. I love when he agrees with Olson that most people’s definition of judicial activism is “a decision I don’t like.” Is Wallace secretly playing for our team, or does he really not understand what he’s saying?
Yeah, I was baffled by Wallace saying “Exactly!” to the judicial-activism thing (and then repeating it). I tentatively concluded that Wallace didn’t understand what Olson was saying, ’cause I assume that Wallace is normally in favor of labeling things as judicial activism.
But I don’t actually know anything about Wallace; it sounds from his Wikipedia article like he may be a little more independent-minded than some of the Fox people. It’s certainly possible that he was intentionally helping Olson out here.
Still, on re-watching the video, I think Wallace intends his questions to be hard-hitting gotchas, catching Olson in a contradiction; I think it’s a testament to Olson’s skill that he responds in a way that makes them sound like softball questions.
(And I think it’s partly due to our biases, too; I bet there are Fox viewers who, after seeing this interview, said “Chris Wallace sure did a good job of catching that so-called conservative lawyer in a contradiction!”)