The Two Faces of Tony Snow

When Snow turned away from Thomas to Martha Raddatz of ABC News, she followed up:

"Q You might repeat the same thing, but why not declassify this? I mean, the President did talk about the surveillance program a day after The New York Times broke that story. This would seem to affect far more people, and it did sound like the President was confirming that story today. He was answering Terry's question --

"MR. SNOW: Well, if you go back -- if you go back and you look through what he said, there was a reference to foreign-to-domestic calls. I am not going to stand up here and presume to declassify any kind of program. That is a decision the President has to make. I can't confirm or deny it. The President was not confirming or denying."

Then Snow continued: "Again, I would take you back to the USA Today story, simply to give you a little context. Look at the poll that appeared the following day. While there was -- part of it said 51 percent of the American people opposed, if you look at when people said, if there is a roster of phone numbers, do you feel comfortable that -- I'm paraphrasing and I apologize -- but something like 64 percent of the polling was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program -- the alleged program -- the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.

"Q But there are polls that show Americans are very concerned about it.

"MR. SNOW: The President -- you cannot run a security -- you cannot base national security on poll numbers. As the President of the United States you have to make your own judgments about what is in the nation's best interest.

"Q You just brought it up, though.

"MR. SNOW: Well, I did bring it up because what you were talking about is how people were concerned about privacy issues, and I tried to relate to you what happened. It was interesting, when people were given the specifics in that story, they did not seem to be terribly troubled."

Let's unpack that. First of all, not only was Snow citing poll results when it suited him, then getting righteously indignant when a reporter cited poll results that didn't, but he didn't have his facts straight.

There was indeed a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Friday and Saturday that found that 51 percent of Americans disapproved of the program.

But the "something like 64 percent" figure would appear to be taken from a Washington Post/ABC News Poll conducted a day earlier, just as the NSA story was starting to emerge. One of the Post/ABC questions was: "If you found out that the NSA had a record of phone numbers that you yourself have called, would that bother you, or not?" And 66 percent of those polled said it would not bother them.

But The Post poll also found that 63 percent found the NSA program acceptable -- a far greater percentage than the USA Today poll. The discrepancies between the two polls has been a subject of great debate in the blogosphere -- see for instance the Mystery Pollster . Among other things, it seems likely that those polled by The Post didn't know nearly as much about the program as those polled a day later. Furthermore, the Post poll questions more explicitly created a conflict between national security and privacy.