You gotta be kidding me...Tony Snow Becomes White House Press Secretary
By Howard Kurtz and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; 12:30 PM
Fox
News commentator Tony Snow was named White House press secretary today
after top officials assured him that he would be not just a spokesman
but an active participant in administration policy debates, people
familiar with the discussions said. A former director of
speechwriting for President Bush's father, Snow views himself as well
positioned to ease the tensions between this White House and the press
corps because he understands both politics and journalism, said sources
familiar with the President's decision. "He knows most of you,"
Bush said today as he announced Snow's appointment in the briefing room
where outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan has presided, "and he's
agreed to take the job anyway." McClellan announced his own
departure last week amid a turnover in White House personnel that was
sought, in part, by GOP politicians who face a mid-term election with
presidential approval ratings at all-time lows. Snow will become
the first Washington pundit -- and an outspoken ideological voice at
that -- to take over the pressroom lectern at a time when tensions
between journalists and the administration have been running high, over
such issues as the Iraq war investigations involving leaks of
classified information. "President Bush hates responding to the
press, hates responding to political enemies -- he thinks it's beneath
him," Snow said on Fox News in March. "He's got a stubborn streak."
What the president needed, he said, was "a series of vigorous defenses"
of his position. Bush said he was well aware that Snow had often
disagreed with him. "I asked him about that," Bush said, and "he said,
'You should hear what I said about the other guy.' " Brit Hume,
Fox's Washington managing editor, said he was "a little surprised" that
Snow would give up his new radio show to take one of the capital's most
demanding jobs. "I think he's excited by the idea of being on the
inside," Hume said. "He believes he will be at the table when decisions
are made. For someone of his bent, that's too good to pass up." Dee
Dee Myers, a press secretary in the Clinton White House, said that if
Bush wants smoother relations with journalists, "Tony has stature. He
understands how the press works from both sides. He has a big
personality, and that can be helpful." But she noted that Snow has "a
long paper trail" and would have to defend policies he has criticized. Outgoing
spokesman McClellan, whose tight-lipped style led to strained relations
with reporters, announced last week that he is stepping down as part of
a White House reorganization being spearheaded by the new chief of
staff, Joshua B. Bolten. Snow will be the first career journalist to
serve in the position since President Gerald R. Ford tapped Ron Nessen,
an NBC correspondent, in 1974. A senior administration official
said last night that Bush is aware of the "perception of disdain for
the institution of the media" on the part of the White House and wants
a spokesman who will forge "a good working relationship" with
journalists. The official said the president is also looking for
"a forceful advocate for the type of historical change he's trying to
accomplish" and added: "We believe Tony fits the bill in both areas. He
has a lot of experience on the air, which with the evolution of the
briefings is something you have to take into consideration." The
last remaining obstacle faded when Snow got the results of a CAT scan
that showed no recurrence of the cancer that forced him to have his
colon surgically removed last year, the sources said. Snow, 50,
is particularly interested in economic and immigration issues. He
intends to insist on greater access for White House reporters, said
sources familiar with his plans. He has described the press corps as a
beast that must be constantly fed. In a December 2000 column in the
Washington Times, he referred to "Democrats and journalists (but I
repeat myself)." He has told associates he plans to function as
an advocate for reporters, an approach that would run counter to the
administration's previous philosophy about the position. The
question of whether to take the job -- which includes a substantial cut
from his media earnings, to $161,000 -- weighed so heavily on Snow that
he lost several pounds in a week. His doctors, who refashioned his
small intestine to function as a colon, had given him the green light
to take the job; one joked that it might give him heartburn but not
cancer. William Kristol, who worked with Snow in the White House
of George H.W. Bush and was a regular panelist on "Fox News Sunday"
when Snow anchored the show, invoked the Fox News slogan in saying: "It
will be good to have a fair and balanced press secretary. "An
outsider with a somewhat happy-go-lucky attitude could help externally,
but also internally," said Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard,
because staffers tend to get "so defensive after years of getting
pummeled." He said Snow could also carry Bush's message on the
airwaves, adding that "this White House has been amazingly negligent in
putting spokesmen out day after day on radio and television." The
genial Snow, a native of Cincinnati, has served as a USA Today
columnist, editorial page editor of the Washington Times, deputy
editorial page editor of the Detroit News and frequent substitute for
radio host Rush Limbaugh. As a White House staffer in 1991, Snow
once tried to get Bush impersonator Dana Carvey to speak to White House
speechwriters so they could better understand the 41st president's
syntax. At "Fox News Sunday," which Snow launched in 1996, he
tried to balance a neutral moderator's role with the aggressive
conservatism he espoused in his newspaper column. At the 2000
Republican convention, Fox executives reprimanded Snow for speaking to
a GOP youth group. They persuaded him to drop the column the next year. On
the program, Snow interviewed candidate George W. Bush in 2000 and,
later, such top officials as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Snow was eased out of
the job in 2003 in favor of Chris Wallace, and was given a weekend
television show and a radio program that is also heard on XM and Sirius
satellite radio. Snow has largely been supportive of the Bush
administration, especially concerning its anti-terrorism efforts, but
has occasionally criticized the president for deviating from
conservative goals. In February, he called Bush's domestic policy
"timid" and "listless" and said Bush's abandonment of his Social
Security privatization plan was "an act of surrender." In
December, Snow told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that "the lack of
spending discipline on the part of Republicans has been disappointing,
and frankly so has George W. Bush's inability to understand the
importance of using a veto." Snow has already gotten a taste of
the job as a "piñata," as he put it last week. In his latest column, he
wrote: "Helpful correspondents have told me where to go, what to use to
fill various orifices, which pack animal I most closely resemble and my
next-world destination." Political researcher Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company --------------------------------------- How can anyone say with a straight face that Fox News isn't biased? Seriously.
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