Foxy Spokesman

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:33 PM

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.

"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.

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 Scott 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."

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?

"President Bush, responding to political pressure over the high price of gasoline, ordered the Justice Department today to investigate price gouging, halted deposits to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the summer, eased environmental rules and urged Congress to roll back tax incentives to energy companies," the Los Angeles Times reports.

"'The first thing to do is to make sure Americans are treated fairly at the gas pump,' said Bush. 'This administration is not going to tolerate manipulation.' . . .

"Despite today's drop in oil and gas prices, many industry observers said that the president's action would not have any significant, lasting impact."

Now, not surprisingly, everyone is writing about energy policy. National Review Editor Rich Lowry criticizes, among others, Republicans:

"The cackling oil executives have returned. They are the guys who sit around corporate boardrooms and decide how high the price of gas will be at the pump, rubbing their hands greedily and emitting squeals of Mephistophelean laughter all the while. These executives exist only in the imaginations of economic demagogues, but that doesn't make them seem any less real to Americans who are gripped by petroleum paranoia every time they don't like the price of gasoline. . . .

"The foolish conceit of our politics is that the oil market works only when prices go down. When the prices go up, it's a scandal. So Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Bill Frist -- showing either a dismaying attraction to the moronic or a desire to pretend to have such an attraction -- have called on President Bush to investigate price gouging by the oil companies.

"Maybe such an investigation will unravel a vast conspiracy of cackling executives, and the Federal Trade Commission will have to raid those corporate boardrooms to restore world crude-oil prices to their natural, low equilibrium. Such, at least, is the fevered dream of the petroleum paranoiacs."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is equally perturbed by the party it usually champions:

"Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress's own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election.

"Oil prices hit $75 a barrel last week, while gas has reached a national average of about $2.85 a gallon. The Republican response has been to put on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fright wigs and shout about corporate greed and market manipulation. House Speaker Denny Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fired off a letter to President Bush yesterday demanding the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department investigate 'price fixing' and 'gouging.' Senator Arlen Specter wants to go further and impose stricter 'antitrust' laws for oil companies, as well as a 'windfall profits' tax. Mr. Hastert also delighted the class warriors in the press corps by lambasting recently retired Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's pay 'unconscionable.' "

Hey, what's $400 million among friends?

"There's been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices--and the entire cause of recent spot shortages--is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer. That self-serving legislation handed Congress's friends in the ethanol lobby a mandate that forces drivers to use 7.5 billion gallons annually of that oxygenate by 2012."

Joe at Americablog hits the GOP from the other direction--the left:

"I read this quote in an AP article and thought, huh? Could she be such a moron? I know it comes from here lackeys at the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, but it's so pathetic.

"Sen. Elizabeth Dole, chairwoman of the Republican Senate campaign committee, issued a statement that said, 'Democrats have decided to play partisan politics with gas prices in a flailing attempt to distract from the growing economy.'

"Clearly, Dole and the GOP are the ones flailing. They've been in cahoots with big oil for years. For Christ sakes, the Prez and the Veep are OIL MEN. According to Open Secrets, oil and gas interests have given 80% of their political money to the GOP over the past couple cycles -- that percentage has risen steadily. The best Dole can do is a press release blaming the Dems. for playing politics."

Georgia10 at Daily Kos pins the blame on the Oval Office:

"So President Bush woke up today and suddenly gave a damn about gas prices. Mr. 32% spent this morning calling for a investigation into possible cheating, price gouging or illegal manipulation in the gasoline markets. He also will asked the EPA to ease clean air restrictions, and he temporarily stopped deposits into the strategic petroleum reserve, a move that will have only a 'negligible' impact on gas prices. The media are lapping it up, but they refuse to mention that Bush is forced to face the consequences of his own failed energy policy.

"Where has the President been for the last three years or so, as we've seen gas prices skyrocket? First, he promised the Iraq War would lower gas prices. As his senior economic adviser stated in 2002:

"The key issue is oil, and a regime change in Iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil," which would drive down oil prices, giving the U.S. economy an added boost.

"It turns out that the Iraq War didn't increase world oil, only oil profits. So, then, President Bush promised that his energy policy (which included massive tax breaks for the oil industry) would help our energy crisis. Well, it did not help, but that result is to be expected when our nation's energy policy is drafted by the oil industry."

Jumping Jack Flash! Mick Jagger , in an ABC sitcom? Why does that seem very . . . establishment?