FNC Tony Snow Top Contender for WH Press Secretary

I think he will do a good job.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Is anyone really surprised?

 

I've heard Snow here in Houston on talk radio; not impressed.

 

Snow has enormous gravitas and will bring credibility to a position in sore need of it at a time that it is needed the most. McClellan was in over his head from the get go. Snow will not have that problem. Snow's ability to be on the inside and his performance will be a measuring-stick for the remainder of the Bush presidency.

 

I've heard Snow here in Houston on talk radio; not impressed. </font>[/QUOTE]Your testimony greatly boosted my already high opinion of Tony Snow. Thanks for the ringing non-endorsement... it is high praise indeed.

 

Why would you hire someone who has already bashed the person he will work for????, simply bizarre..major spin and damage control going on at the White House to try get bushs numbers out of the Watergate zone.

Tony Snow On President Bush: ‘An Embarrassment,’ ‘Impotent,’ ‘Doesn’t Seem To Mean What He Says’


– Bush has “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.” [3/17/06]

– “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.” [3/17/06]

– “President Bush distilled the essence of his presidency in this year’s State of the Union Address: brilliant foreign policy and listless domestic policy.” [2/3/06]

– “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” [11/11/05]

– Bush “has a habit of singing from the Political Correctness hymnal.” [10/7/05]

– “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [9/30/05]

– Bush “has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor — now!” [9/30/05]

– “When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can’t say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn’t seem to mean what he says.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “The president doesn’t seem to give a rip about spending restraint.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “Bush, for all his personal appeal, ultimately bolstered his detractors’ claims that he didn’t have the drive and work ethic to succeed.” [11/16/00]

– “Little in the character of demeanor of Al Gore or George Bush makes us say to ourselves: Now, this man is truly special! Little in our present peace and prosperity impels us to say: Give us a great man!” [8/25/00]

– “George W. Bush, meanwhile, talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother’s attractive feistiness, but he also got his father’s syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” [8/25/00]

– “He recently tried to dazzle reporters by discussing the vagaries of Congressional Budget Office economic forecasts, but his recitation of numbers proved so bewildering that not even his aides could produce a comprehensible translation. The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.” [8/25/00]

– “On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries.” [8/25/00]

 

Tony Snow will either flop miserably as someone suggested or else turn around the Administration's public image. He will make a very good spokesman for the Bush foreign policy and may even be able to smack some sense into them about what the people who elected them really want to see on the domestic front.

But most of all, he's a guy who understands how the media works. He may be one of the few Republicans who could rival the Clinton era manipulation of the media (not necessarily manipulation in a bad sense). Whether it was just because they were willing or because the Clinton spin machine was really that good...

The media always seemed to be talking about the things Clinton wanted talked about. When they did talk about things he didn't want talked about... they talked about it in the way he wanted it talked about. His scandals were most often cast as the accusers (read witchhunters) against the noble but flawed champion of the people.

 

Aslan, Maybe Snow will remind Bush of what he should have been on the domestic front... or maybe his appointment is an indication that Bush has already done some soul searching and realized that Snow was largely correct.

Either way, it seems like a very courageous and confident thing to appoint someone who has been so openly and pointedly critical of you. It appears to be the mark of someone who values honest, critical opinions. I can't imagine a Clinton or Nixon doing making that kind of appointment. They didn't have much tolerance for critics outside the WH much less inside.

Notably 5 of the 14 quotes you provided were from the 2000 election season. There is a joke about a bird that freezes while flying south, maybe you've heard it? In short, not everyone who seems to be dumping on you is your enemy and not everyone who helps you get out of the pile is your friend.

 

I saw a Fox News Video of the announcement and the President admitted that Tony had written some critical things about him...

He said that when he asked Tony about those remarks, Tony told him he should see what he wrote about the other guys...

I Bush is really as he tries to appear... Then he really does appreciate someone telling him the truth...

Far too many leaders, secular and religious, have been destroyed because they had one too many "yes" men or men that were too frightened of them to speak out when they felt something was wrong...

Proverbs 27:6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Mike Sr.

 

I find it difficult to trust anyone who compromises his standards for personal aggrandizement. This is just another reason to not trust the official line coming from the White House.

Good for Bush, bad for Snow.

 

That's not how he appears.

This is how he appears. Even his daddy's good friend Brent Scowcroft thinks so (linkie).

And from a funny email I got:[joke]One day after being named the new White House spokesman, former Fox News pundit Tony Snow announced that a deal merging Fox News and the Bush White House had been successfully completed.

"The merger between Fox News and the White House can be summed up in one word: synergy," Mr. Snow said. "The two entities have been working in lockstep for five years now and this merger is a formal acknowledgment of that fact."

While many Beltway observers had long assumed that a merger between the White House and Fox News was inevitable, not until reporters saw workmen hanging a "Fair and Balanced" sign from the White House portico this morning did they know a deal had finally been struck.

According to those familiar with the deal, the final sticking point in the negotiations was ironed out late last night when President George W. Bush agreed to report to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.

(Source)
[/joke]
[editted for spelling]

[ April 27, 2006, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: Daisy ]

 

Oh, how I would like to believe you are right, that it is a mark of someone who values honest, critical opinions. But the Bush-voter-turned-Bush-cynic in me (I can't help it, Bush turned me that way) believes it is damage control and the hope that since Tony Snow has a rather large conservative following that his appointment may boost the Bush/Republican poll numbers before the elections coming up and maybe Republican voters won't stay home on voting day. </font>[/QUOTE]Maybe. But just as likely I think the Bush Administrations worst failure has been communication and "damage control", aka spin.

I recently saw a quote where Bush was asked about poll numbers. His answer was basically that he was doing the best he could to do the right thing and couldn't worry about polls. As much as I respect that sentiment, it is unfortunately not realistic in today's media environment especially for a Republican. Either he somehow gets his message communicated or else he lets the media try to win Pulitzers by ripping him apart.

I think some of the media treatment can be attributed to their overwhelmingly liberal viewpoints... but much has to do with poor handling by the Bush administration. For instance, Bush's habit of ignoring the media has been played into a "Bush is arrogant" song.

This article kind of illustrates this: http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellColumns/newscolumn/2006/col20060426.asp

I thought it was interesting that the quality of the investigative reporting against Bush was so vastly superior to that against Clinton. My opinion is that liberal reporters really weren't interested in holding Clinton accountable so long as he was advancing the policies they favored (IOW's. "Doing a good job") while they are very much interested in anything that will divert Bush from achieving anything that might move the country's policies more conservative... especially concerning social issues like homosexual privileges and abortion and even school choice.

 

Isn't that hilarious...

Something on the order of 85% of the Washington press corps consistently vote Democratic or even more leftist. They hold views clearly to the left of the American public on virtually every issue... and somehow this smug, smart-aleck "joke" is supposed to be funny? The merger between the left and MSM was completed long ago and dwarfs any bias at Fox.

FTR, I think Fox leans to the right. OTOH, virtually all of the other mainstream media organizations that do investigation and direct reporting not only lean to the left... they are very much in the "mainstream" of leftist thought. So much so that they lack the perspective to even realize that they indeed have a bias... or else are simply not honest enough to admit it.

 

Just curious, Scott...

How do you know just how the Washington press corps members vote? And yes, the joke is quite funny, if it weren't so close to the truth.

Righties like to poke at Dan Rather, but can't seem to get the joke when it's on their guy.

 

http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp

http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics.asp

You can whack at Bozell's site all you want... so long as you show something contradictory to the studies he cites.

The bottom of the second citation may give some insight into why Iraq is reported the way it is/was. The people responsible for writing about it were biased against it from the very start.