NO 'HISTORY' MADE WITH HILLARY CHAT.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

As publicity ops go, Hillary Clinton's interview with ABC's Barbara Walters didn't do much to convince me to buy her new book, ``Living History.'' For sheer spectacle, it was outdone by the Fox News Channel's inevitable post-interview, anti-Clinton screed.

ABC's Barbara Walters Sunday special, ``Hillary Clinton's Journey,'' was dull, desultory, pro forma hackery, with Walters lobbing softballs and Hillary peppering them about the infield. Given what the Clintons have been through and put our nation through, the interview seemed curiously circumspect. Anyone would've asked tougher questions.

Walters posed as Hillary's pal and made her queries as much about herself as she did her subject. ``I have to ask this,'' she sighed dramatically about yet another curiously genteelly posed question about Bill Clinton's womanizing; well, if so, then that's an unnecessary introduction to the question, isn't it?

For her part, Hillary dribbled out the sort of measured, uninteresting responses one has come to expect of Democrats these days - if that's the sort of mush that pads out her book, here's betting far fewer copies will be read than sold (she did have one good line, about Buddy the dog being the only member of the family who wanted to be around Bill during the Lewinsky scandal).

She seemed less than credible when explaining why she believed her husband's lies concerning his affairs for as long as she did, and she merely seemed to be posturing for the red states on the election-night map when she spoke of how her faith got her through the darkest days of Bill's presidency. ``Journey'' seemed calculated to be as bland and unprovocative as possible.

Provocative was the whole point of Fox News Channel's ``Hillary's Tale: The Big Story'' (``Big Story,'' of course, not so subtly suggesting that Clinton's book is not particularly honest), hosted by John Gibson. (On the West Coast, ``Hillary's Tale'' aired before ``Hillary's Journey.'') Much of the discussion was, as even former Republican Sen. Alphonse D'Amato put it, ``preposterous'' (when a Republican has to rise to defend the Clintons on the Fox News Channel, it's a fair bet the network has gone too far), but at least it was lively and more entertaining by a long shot.

The program began with Gibson talking with Dick Morris, who was legendarily slimy when he worked for the Clinton White House and scarcely seems to have changed since his estrangement from the president, and Susan Estrich, a Democrat who has the abrasive demeanor of a typical Fox News Channel commentator. They whaled on Hillary like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld at a Friars' Club roast of Saddam Hussein.

Later in the broadcast, there was a token effort at providing that phantom ``balance'' Fox News prides itself for having. Hillary's former press secretary Howard Wolfson told Morris, ``You have an ax to grind,'' and Democratic spokesman Lanny Davis began, ``Clinton haters, which your show seems to appeal to ...''

Gibson feigned shock, and Estrich declared, ``I hardly count myself as a Clinton hater.'' No, she's a Clinton fan who just happens to have voiced the opinion that Hillary had almost no right to write her book. With friends like these ...

Of course, Clinton brought some of this on herself by seeming less than honest with Walters. Much of Fox's hour was taken up with what political damage the Walters interview would cost her, despite the fact that D'Amato, who among the guests had the background lending itself to the best insight on matters like this, conceded that in fact the interview probably helped her.

Still, ``Hillary's Tale'' seemed disturbingly obsessed with the former first lady's potential run for the White House in 2008, assuming a grave tone usually reserved for discussing al-Qaida sleeper cells in America. Morris offered a shockingly fatuous and venal pronouncement: ``Bill and Hillary want Bush re-elected.'' What?

Morris is openly, flagrantly contemptuous of the Clintons for personal reasons, and for that reason alone Fox News had no business giving him air time. Of course, given the kind of guy he postures as, the Clintons had no business associating with him, either.