It may not have been the party of the century, but Fox News Sunday’s celebration of its tenth anniversary on Wednesday was certainly the party of the year for Washington’s political junkies and social climbers.
Where else could you rub shoulders, clink wine glasses and trade political gossip with Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Fox cohorts Roger Ailes and Brit Hume, House Speaker Dennny Hastert and his predecessor Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson, as well as freshly-minted White House press secretary Tony Snow and freshly-deposed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay?
The timing for the party couldn’t have been better as far as Fox News was concerned. Just hours earlier, President Bush had introduced Fox News commentator Snow as his new spokesman to succeed the burned-out Scott McLellan.
Several hundred A-list guests crowded into Franco Nuschese’s trendy Café Milano in Georgetown to hear Murdoch and Ailes praise Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, who in turn thanked his producer and regular panelists in a succinct speech that lived up to his comment, “As King Henry the Eighth said to his each of his wives, “I won’t keep you long.”
A beaming Rove showed no sign of being discomfited by having just finished several hours of testimony before a federal grand jury in the CIA leak case, or for having been demoted in the White House staff shakeup earlier this month. He glad-handed Murdoch and Mike Wallace and seemed to be enjoying himself greatly.
So did DeLay, who stepped down from his leadership post and will soon leave Congress after being indicted on money laundering charges in Texas. DeLay told The Hill that he’s planning to write his memoirs, and is exploring a number of other possible venues that will keep him involved in public policy after he returns to private life.
And in contrast to his combative and partisan image, DeLay thanked The Hill, which began publication just before Republicans took control of Congress in January 1995, for covering him well and objectively, although he stopped short of repeating the Fox News mantra of “fair and balanced.”
Not surprisingly, Democrats were hard to find, although former Sen. John Breaux and literary lawyer Bob Barnett circulated among the crowd.