Blizzard of Criticism

"After all, this is the Fox News commentator who, after the most recent State of the Union address, described the Bush administration as having a 'brilliant foreign policy.'

"Snow is, as well, the political personality who said of what honest conservatives and liberals describe as the most imperial presidency in history: 'No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.' . . .

"If Tony Snow really does not think that George Bush has done enough to defend presidential powers and prerogatives, then he is a fine fit for this imperial presidency. He has not merely drunk the Kool-Aid, he has complained that the mix is not strong enough.

"Where Scott McClellan listlessly disseminated distortion, Snow will do so with gusto."

HuffPost's Marty Kaplan {vbar} takes issue with some comments by Fox's Fred Barnes:

"The last thing Tony should be, he said, is Mr. Nice Guy. If Snow is asked about his paper trail of comments criticizing Bush, now circulating among those pesky bloggers, Barnes said he should tell reporters that he's not going to comment on any of that, nosiree; his job now is to serve the president, not to rehash the past.

"It's refreshing to have the Faustian bargain of serving this administration made so explicit. In exchange for Snow's gaining immortality -- which in this era means being on television so much that his post-Bush speaking fees will exponentially soar -- all he has to give up is everything he stands for. Those anti-Bush cracks? Inoperative. Next question.

"The problem with the McClellan robot wasn't that he was clueless about what was going on in the West Wing; it was that he wasn't charming enough, that he couldn't be reprogrammed with a new set of '. . . ongoing investigation that is ongoing . . . ' loops, that he seemed to have lost interest in attempting to convince the press corps that they had any reason to believe him.

"But as Snow's Fox colleagues attested, McClellan's successor is amiable and good-looking (the two essential signs of gravitas). When Snow stonewalls the press, they'll know he's a true insider, and that he's doing it out of professionalism, not because he's a scared chipmunk."

The blogger at State of the Day can't resist an anti-Fox crack:

"Tony Snow moves from the presidential propaganda channel to the, well, presidential propaganda channel.

"The lines are so blurred I can't see through the Snow."