Foxy Spokesman

I touch on this in the story below, but what is the Web for if not expanding on all the stuff you couldn't fit into the paper?

With Tony Snow taking the White House spokesman's job--a development I had to work until late in the evening to fully confirm--consider for a moment the profile of past press secretaries.

Jody Powell was part of Jimmy Carter's inner circle. James Brady had been a spokeswoman for HUD, OMB and DOD before taking the White House job under Ronald Reagan. After Brady was wounded in the assassination attempt, Reagan tapped Larry Speakes, who had been a vice president of Hill & Knowlton. Marlin Fitzwater was an administration PR guy. Dee Dee Myers had been Bill Clinton's campaign spokeswoman. Her successor, Mike McCurry, was a political PR guy who worked for Bob Kerrey in the primaries and then became the State Department flack. Joe Lockhart, who had dabbled in television, was McCurry's deputy and Clinton's '96 campaign spokesman. Ari Fleischer was a Hill spokesman who became Bush's campaign mouthpiece. Scott McClellan was Fleischer's deputy and a Bush loyalist from Texas.

Notice a pattern here?

They're all PR pros. Not a real ex-journalist among them.

That wasn't always the case. Once, in a less partisan time, it was considered a normal career move for a respected journalist to do a tour of duty as a White House spokesman. Steve Early did it for FDR. Jim Hagerty did it for Ike. Pierre Salinger did it for JFK. Ron Nessen did it for Gerald Ford.

But modern presidents have opted for political publicists who, by and large, have protected the boss, stuck to the talking points and felt comfortable stiffing the press. Some were helpful away from the microphones, of course, but they had spent their careers promoting, deflecting and denying rather than digging out facts.

All of which makes the Snow appointment a fascinating one, especially for an administration that has often seemed to give the media the back of its collective hand.

Here's my dispatch:

Fox News commentator Tony Snow agreed last night to become White House press secretary 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 the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the appointment had not been officially confirmed, although an announcement is expected today.

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 issues ranging from the Iraq war to investigations involving leaks of classified information.