{"id":8769,"date":"2006-10-16T12:30:23","date_gmt":"2006-10-16T16:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8769.html"},"modified":"2006-10-16T12:30:23","modified_gmt":"2006-10-16T16:30:23","slug":"tony-snows-fun-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/tony-snows-fun-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Snow’s fun job"},"content":{"rendered":"

No White House press secretary has ever hit the campaign trail to back candidates or raise money, but [tag]Tony Snow[\/tag] is … how should we put this … a trailblazer. With Bush and Cheney having “popularity issues,” and First Lady Laura Bush only able to attend so many events a week, the White House is digging deeper into its bench and has found that Snow is willing to do what he can to help Republicans — and conservative crowds seem to like him.<\/p>\n

A few naysayers, however, are pointing out some of the inherent problems<\/a> with Snow’s competing agendas.<\/p>\n

“The principal job of the press secretary is to present information to reporters, not propaganda,” said David R. Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and also advised President Bill Clinton. “If he is seen as wearing two hats, reporters as well as the public will inevitably wonder: is he speaking to us now as the traditional press secretary, or is he speaking to us as a political partisan?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the risk of sounding overly flippant, is Gergen just now waking up after a six-year nap? The Bush White House has had three press secretaries — Ari Fleischer, Scott McClellan, and Tony Snow. There hasn’t been a single briefing, gaggle, or day in which these guys’ principal responsibility was as clear as day: they’re partisan hacks first.<\/p>\n

Two<\/em> hats? Traditional press secretary vs. political partisan? We should be so lucky. The Bush gang threw out the “traditional press secretary” hat on its first day. Briefings have never been about answering questions; they’ve been hour-long sessions in which Bush’s spokespersons will repeat the agreed upon talking points.<\/p>\n

It’s reached a point in which a growing number of journalists have begun to wonder whether Q&A with with the press secretary is even necessary. Snow could just as easily hand out a list of sound-bites, and let reporters pick which ones fit into their stories.<\/p>\n

Or, put another way, is there ever a moment in which the White House press secretary isn’t<\/i> speaking as a political partisan?
\n
\nBy the way, how does Snow summarize<\/a> his job?<\/p>\n

Tony Snow draped his lanky frame across a wooden lectern, leaned forward and gazed out at 850 adoring Republicans who had paid $175 apiece to hear him speak. There was a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, as if he was about to reveal some deep inner secret from his new life as the White House press secretary.<\/p>\n

“Yesterday,” Mr. Snow declared, “I was in the Oval Office with the president…”<\/p>\n

He cut himself off, took a perfectly calibrated three-second pause and switched into an aw-shucks voice for dramatic effect: “I just looove saying that! Yeaaah, I was in the Oval Office. Just meeee and the president. Nooooobody else.” The crowd lapped it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s an impressive group of folks at the White House, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Last week, Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) raised new questions about the efficacy of the president’s strategy on Iraq. The White House press bureau had more than a few questions about the development, but Snow wasn’t there to respond — he took the day off to attend a Republican fundraiser. Jim Axelrod, chief White House correspondent for CBS News, said, “This is the kind of thing you would expect the press secretary to be handling square on.”<\/p>\n

But Snow was tied up, telling an audience how much he “loooves” saying that he and the president, and “nooooobody else,” get to chat in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

The man has his priorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No White House press secretary has ever hit the campaign trail to back candidates or raise money, but [tag]Tony Snow[\/tag] is … how should we put this … a trailblazer. With Bush and Cheney having “popularity issues,” and First Lady Laura Bush only able to attend so many events a week, the White House is […]<\/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-8769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8769","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=8769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}