"Fox & Friends" Finds Ratings and Controversy YouTube Gretchen Carlson and Mitt Romney on the morning show "Fox & Friends." When it comes to sitting for interviews Mitt Romney is not usually a willing and eager subject. But there is one invitation he rarely turns down. "Fox & Friends" has had Mr. Romney as a guest 21 times in the last year. That's almost twice a month, vastly more than the four times each he has appeared on NBC's "Today" and ABC's "Good Morning America," which draw five times the audience. Mr. Romney is hardly alone in recognizing the power of "Fox & Friends" as a high-decibel megaphone pointing directly at the Republican base. At the height of the primaries not a week went by without an appearance by one of the candidates. And when leading Republicans like Gov. Rick Scott of Florida or Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin have something to say, they do it on "Fox & Friends." It is easy to see why. Perhaps more than any other show on the Fox News Channel, "Fox & Friends" has become a powerful platform for some of the most strident attacks on President Obama.Conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama's religion once found an uncritical ear on the show's set. Assertions that Mr. Obama leaked national security secrets for political gain are accepted as fact. And its hosts recently took time on the air to congratulate one of their producers for making a four-minute video that painted Mr. Obama as a failure. That incident points to the question that hangs over Fox News as the presidential campaign moves into full swing: How far can it push its coverage of Mr. Obama without sparking another war with the White House? Neither Fox News nor the White House is eager for a repeat of their bitter feud in 2009. That year, as the Tea Party began to coalesce as a major political movement, Fox hosts like Glenn Beck adopted a particularly aggressive posture toward the White House. The administration went as far as to say that it considered Fox News a part of the political opposition. The two sides have managed a sort of détente since David Axelrod, the president's senior adviser, and Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, sat down for a lunch late that year. And after the White House raised objections to the Obama video, the network removed it from its Web site. In an angry phone call, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, told the network's executive vice president for news, Michael Clemente, that even by "Fox & Friends" standards the video crossed the line, according to two Democrats who weren't authorized to speak of the private conversation. The news division at Fox has long tried to avoid having its reporters appear on the show whenever possible. Do we make mistakes? Absolutely," said Bill Shine, executive vice president for programming at Fox News. And when we make them we try to fix them, apologize for them, get out in front of them. Mr. Shine noted that the show falls under the network's entertainment umbrella and does not pretend to be straight news. There are visits from Hooters waitresses on the "Let Freedom Wing" U.S.O. tour, debates about whether parents who give children large allowances create entitlement societies, and outrage-filled segments on the killing of bald eagles. It is a place where Occupy Wall Street protesters bang drums instead of looking for jobs, Transportation Security Administration agents willingly violate grandmothers and toddlers, and the "War on Christmas" never stands at a cease-fire. Critics of the show include not just Democrats and comedy outlets like "Saturday Night Live," but reporters, producers and executives at Fox. Ask them what they think privately, and they will often roll their eyes and mention some embarrassing mishap, like the time Steve Doocy, one of three hosts, insisted in 2007 that the president was raised Muslim. The folksy Mr. Doocy is joined by Brian Kilmeade, a wisecracking soccer coach, and Gretchen Carlson, the often-severe and incredulous voice of authority. Ms. Carlson's childhood baby sitter in Minnesota was Representative Michele Bachmann.