"I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," she said. "I don't know if it's gonna be ever seeking a title, though. It may be just doing a darn good job as a reporter or covering some of the current events." (Which is funny, because in her Tea Party appearance, she mocked the "lamestream media," and earlier in the interview with Wallace, she joked that she wasn't very good at her job as a Fox News analyst because she had "no idea" how to handicap the current GOP field. "Well, fire me, then, Roger!" she chirped in an aside to the camera and to Fox News boss Roger Ailes.)

But Wallace pressed her again, saying she definitely wasn't closing the door to a campaign. "I won't close a door that perhaps could be open for me in the future," Palin said. "I don't want any American to ever close a door in their personal or their professional lives and put themselves in a box and say, 'Heck yeah, I'm gonna do that,' or, 'No way, I'm not gonna do that,' when we don't know what the future holds."

There's still something about the scattershot way Palin appears to be picking her schedule -- such a contrast from the kind of strategic, disciplined early work that usually needs to go into a successful presidential campaign -- that makes it seem unlikely she's doing anything more than seeking fame and fortune right now. But she acknowledged that she does have a handful of advisors e-mailing her briefings every morning on what's going on in politics and the world. Is that something other potential candidates might be doing? Golly, don't ask Sarah. "I have no idea how conventionally people do this, how they try to open a door that perhaps isn't even open, and if that involves having a group of advisors send 'em emails every morning, I don't know," she said. The briefings are making her a bit more up to date than she was before she ran for vice president, she said: "I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events."

One thing she does know -- whoever gets the Republican nomination should have no problem beating the guy who's in the White House now. Unless, that is, President Obama starts a war.

"Say he played the war card," she said, casually name-checking Pat Buchanan, whose column apparently inspired this bit of analysis. "Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided to really come out and do whatever he could do to support Israel -- which I'd like him to do. That changes the dynamics and what we can assume is gonna happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be elected."

It's not so much that Palin thinks Obama would declare war on the 17th most populous country in the world just to win reelection. It's more that if he did do something like that, it would give people second thoughts about his failed presidency.

"If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, 'Well I think he's tougher than he is today,'" she said. "And there wouldn't be as much passion to make sure that he doesn't serve another four years."

For some reason, she bracketed "serve" with air quotes, as if to say Obama wasn't really serving at all. Which is probably exactly what most of the people who want her to take him on in 2012 would say, anyway. Palin may or may not wind up running for president. But it'll certainly be more entertaining if she does.

Unless, of course, she wins.

O'Reilly is smart enough not to berate Stewart. But Papa Bear -- as Stewart's colleague Stephen Colbert calls his faux-role model -- tries almost obsessively to belittle the "Daily Show" host, under a painfully thin guise of attempts at good humor. More oddly, he seems to want Stewart's approval of his own work. Stewart, for his part, supplies all the actual good humor, but remains almost obsequiously game to go along with O'Reilly's weirdness.

Their 2004 encounter started out with O'Reilly asking, "You know what's really frightening? Do you know what's really frightening? You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary. You got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, and they can vote. You can't stop them!" A laughing Stewart replied, "Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers." O'Reilly then claimed -- rather implausibly -- that 87 percent of Stewart's audience is intoxicated.

Last night, O'Reilly opened up by asking what his guest thinks of the president's performance. Stewart expressed some ambivalence, the kind of nuanced perspective not normally welcome on cable news ("You really don't know?" O'Reilly sneered) before settling on a defense of the president's "re-engage[ment] of the regulatory mechanism."

"You know, that's a pretty smart analysis," O'Reilly replied. "You know, a lot of people don’t think you're smart. Did your writers come up with that, or did you?"

From there, the two went on to a fairly arcane dispute over whether or not Fox is unfair in how much coverage it gives to the speeches of various partisan figures, especially the president. O'Reilly got worked up, then played it off as banter with the idiot funnyman. "You're absolutely right," Stewart said, and he let it go.

But the most touchingly odd bit came when O’Reilly turned to a poll that he believes gives his network the validation he's after. Here's the exchange:

O'Reilly: Now, are you shocked, shocked, that a Democratic poll operation shows that Fox News is the most trusted news operation in the country. 49 percent of Americans trust Fox News. Are you stunned?

Stewart: No, no I'm not shocked by that. Are you shocked that an Internet poll said I was the most trusted newscaster?

O'Reilly: Yeah, but that was like, Blinkie did it. This was a big, big, big concern. And someone told me, off the record, that you were one of the 49 percent.

Stewart ended up telling O'Reilly, to his obvious pleasure, that he's the sanest voice at the network -- though that's like being "the thinnest kid at fat camp." The whole thing is really worth watching, because liberal America's favorite comedian does manage to land some punches without getting punched.

 

This whole thing's been set off again by an Associated Press image that appears to show the president bowing to Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio during the trip he made there last week in order to talk about high-speed rail. (On video, it doesn't look as much like a bow; more like a deep head nod.)

When something like this happens, you can depend on Fox News' ever-vapid morning show "Fox and Friends" to be on the case. And, of course, they have been, both Monday and Tuesday this week. On Monday, they were judging.

"Originally people said, you know, the president of the United States bows to no one," host Steve Doocy said then. "But, as it turns out, he bows to everybody." His co-host, Alisyn Camerota, chimed in to say, "We've seen it too many times now."

But on Tuesday, they actually had Iorio on the show. Problem was, Iorio -- a Democrat -- obviously thought their little game was stupid. And they weren't prepared for that.

"It's hard for me to believe this is such a major issue," Iorio said at one point. That didn't stop Doocy and co-host Brian Kilmeade, though. Doocy pressed the mayor, asking, "So it was a mannerly bow?" Iorio responded by trying to politely change topics, perhaps to something with at least a modicum of substance to it.

"It is a mannerly acknowledgment, and not something that I think deserves the kind of analysis that's been going on," she said. "But I can talk about high-speed rail, if you'd like, that deserves a great deal of analysis."

That provoked a little laughter, and a sarcastic-sounding "Right" from Kilmeade. And then the two tried to get Iorio to say the president's trip was really just a campaign event.

The whole thing has to be seen to be believed; with thanks to an eagle-eyed reader, it's below.

Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com

Or, say, the combination of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

The two were face-to-face for the first time ever on Wednesday, brought together by Palin's having just joined Fox News as a contributor on Monday. Colleague Bill O'Reilly got the first crack at the former Alaska governor in a prime-time interview on Tuesday, but now it was Beck's turn. And he'd put together something special for his guest. The interview wasn't held in the normal studio, but in a restaurant down on the tip of Manhattan -- ironically, one that serves that most Communist of salad greens, arugula -- so that the Statue of Liberty, out in the water not far away, could be constantly seen over his shoulder.

Beck had made this choice, he explained, because of what the statue symbolized. There was no time for anyone to stop and think: "What it represents? Oh, you mean mass immigration?" though, because the two had much bigger and even sillier fish to fry.

Like Beck's diary. Sure, it read like a parody of what an overeager teenager might think he or she was supposed to include in it, but the host still felt he needed to read Palin the entry he said he'd written the night before, which went as follows:

Tomorrow I meet Sarah Palin and her family for the first time. I'm actually a little nervous, as she is one of the only people that I can see that can possibly lead us out of where we are. I don't know yet if she's strong enough, if she's well-enough advised or if she knows she can no longer trust anyone. I don't know if she can lead and not lose her soul. That is where I'd like to go for the next hour: Find out if this is the woman that can lead us and not lose her soul.

Though Palin's face seemed to betray a bit of displeasure at hearing parts of this read to her on national television, its themes ended up being the basis for much of the interview. The pair focused a concept of a reluctant politician, one who doesn't really want power but will accept it if the people cry out for them to take it. Could this just be a ploy, a hint that if Palin does run for president, she'll try the astroturf "draft" campaign route more than a few politicians have gone before? Well, maybe.

"I would be perfectly happy to go back to Wasilla, Alaska with my five children and my grandson and raise a happy, healthy family, loving the great outdoors, doing the things that we do in Alaska," Palin said at one point. "But if I believe that in some capacity I can help this great nation, I'm gonna be willing to sacrifice and to change some things in my lifestyle in order to serve. That doesn't have to mean, though, top dog -- it doesn't have to entail having any kind of title."

Palin and Beck had come to this point because of a somewhat odd exchange they'd just had, one that started when the host asked his guest to name her favorite Founding Father. It seemed, for a time, as if Palin was reprising the infamous answer she gave when Katie Couric asked her what publications she reads and she responded, "all of them." That's exactly the answer Palin gave Beck at first, too. But when he pressed her, jokingly saying, "that's bullcrap," she settled on George Washington, since he'd been the Founding Fathers' leader. And she made it clear she knew at least a little about him, too.

"He didn't want to be a king. He returned power to the people, then he went back to Mt. Vernon, he went back to his farm. He was almost reluctant to serve as president, too," Palin said, adding, "And that’s who you need to find to serve in government, in a bureaucracy, those who you know will serve for the right reasons, because they're reluctant to get out there and seek a limelight and seek power, they're doing it for the people."

Of course, just because they'd been focusing on reluctant politicians didn't mean Palin and Beck couldn't make the exact opposite point when it served their purposes. Of healthcare reform, the former governor said, "When incumbents are even willing to give up their power, their seat, when they're saying, 'Hey, if it costs me my seat in Congress, it costs me my seat in Congress, I'm going to cram this thing through anyway,' that's a scary, scary thing to consider."

Did that have much internal logic, or any at all? Not really. But that didn't matter, because Beck was there to save her: "It's not if they're doing it on principles," he said. But principles and Democrats aren't two things that go together in his show's world, so he added, "It is if they're doing it for bribes, money, power, positions," something he regularly tells his audience they are.

That wasn't the only time a discussion of healthcare reform, or of the Obama administration, went off the rails. Referring, as always, back to himself, Beck took Palin briefly through his theory that the administration is deliberately trying to "spend us into oblivion" before asking if she agreed. This was the response:

I do. I do believe that -- because again, Glenn, we can't be so stupid as to not see these common-sense solutions: "Hey, government, quit thinking that the solution to the healthcare problem today is for government to take it over and run a system better than the private sector system." We see something like that, we scratch our heads and say, "Well, what are we missing?" It's a ridiculous notion that the White House has to take over healthcare and think that they can run it better. We cannot be missing something so blatantly -- it has to be purposeful, what they are doing. Otherwise, otherwise I would say, Glenn, that there is no hope, that there are no solutions.

For the record, of course, Democrats' efforts to change the healthcare system are probably purposeful -- you don't normally write a thousand-plus page bill by accident. Also, technically, telling government that it doesn't have a solution should probably not, by itself, count as a solution. But these are little details.

Besides, we already know what Palin and Beck would say upon reading the previous paragraph. That's because they also spent a good bit of the show complaining about their status as victims of liberal haters. But they did get an opportunity to mock some of those critics towards the end of the show, when they offered themselves up to NBC as co-hosts of "Saturday Night Live."

Palin, to her credit, was sure that NBC would be smart enough to take them up on the offer and watch the ratings roll in. Beck, though, was convinced that the network's left-wing bias would be too strong, that they would never say yes. But that's probably just his conspiracy theorist heart at work. NBC was, after all, dumb enough to bring Jay Leno back to his old 11:35 time slot; surely, it wouldn't need any political reason to make the mistake of turning down what would no doubt be the best smoking wreck on television for a night.