Foxy Spokesman

"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."

Andrew Sullivan endorses Snow--or at least, many of his past statements:

"I've always had perfectly pleasant dealings with Tony Snow, and respect his commitment to genuine conservatism and to fighting the war on Islamist terror. I also agree with him that this president has 'lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.' I agree that 'George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion.' I agree with him that 'when it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can't say no.' I agree with Tony that 'on the policy side, Bush has become a classical dime-store Democrat.' I agree with him that 'No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives . . .'

"But I'm not going to stand in front of the press and defend this record now, am I? The first question Snow may get if he takes the job is about his own splendid eviscerations of this president's rank betrayal of fiscal conservatism and limited government in the past. Good luck, Tony. You'll need it."

Moving on to other politics, is $3 gas souring Republicans on the free market?