News reports made it clear this was going to happen this morning, and now it’s official. Bush introduced Fox News’ Tony Snow as Scott McClellan’s replacement just moments ago. After Snow thanked the president for the honor, Bush and Snow left the podium without taking questions. (NBC’s David Gregory shouted, “Mr. Preisdent, what do you think this choice says about what you need in a second term?” The rest of the press corps laughed a bit, but Bush waved and walked away.)<\/p>\n
Apparently, before accepting the position, Snow was a little picky about his responsibilities, and wouldn’t agree to take the job until he received assurances<\/a> that he would have “guaranteed access to the president’s ear and to an unusually large degree of latitude to reconfigure the WH press operation.”<\/p>\n At least in the short term, Snow should probably worry less about West Wing power and more about his eyebrow-raising paper trail. Think Progress<\/a> and Media Matters<\/a> have poured through Snow’s on-air and in-print comments on Bush’s presidency and have found more than a few gems. A few of my favorites include:<\/p>\n * “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” [11\/11\/05]<\/p>\n * “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [9\/30\/05]<\/p>\n * “Bush, for all his personal appeal, ultimately bolstered his detractors’ claims that he didn’t have the drive and work ethic to succeed.” [11\/16\/00]<\/p>\n * “At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” [8\/25\/00]<\/p>\n * “The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.” [8\/25\/00]<\/p>\n This morning, Bush said he asked Snow about some of these comments, and Snow reportedly told him, “You should have seen what I said about the other guy.”<\/p>\n I really doubt the White House press corps will push Snow on any of these previous comments, but they’ll be worth holding onto. I have a hunch we’ll be hearing them again, from time to time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News reports made it clear this was going to happen this morning, and now it’s official. Bush introduced Fox News’ Tony Snow as Scott McClellan’s replacement just moments ago. After Snow thanked the president for the honor, Bush and Snow left the podium without taking questions. (NBC’s David Gregory shouted, “Mr. Preisdent, what do you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}