Bush Taps Snow As New Press Secretary

Apr 26, 10:12 AM (ET)

By TERENCE HUNT

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Wednesday named conservative commentator Tony Snow as White House press secretary, putting a new face on a troubled administration.

Snow, a Fox news pundit and former speechwriter in the White House under Bush's father, replaced Scott McClellan who resigned in a personnel shuffle intended to re-energize the White House and lift the president's record-low approval ratings.

"My job is to make decisions and his job is to help explain those decisions to the press corps and the American people," Bush said, with Snow and McClellan at his side in the White House briefing room.

Snow's appointment is notable in a White House that has a reputation for not suffering criticism. He has had some harsh things to say about Bush.


(AP) In this undates Photo provided by Fox News, Conservative pundit Tony Snow is shown. Snow will be...
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Snow called the president "something of an embarrassment," a leader who has "lost control of the federal budget," the architect of a "listless domestic policy" and a man who has "a habit of singing from the political correctness hymnal."

Bush shrugged off the criticism. "He's not afraid to express his own opinions," he said of his new spokesman. "For those of you who've read his columns and listened to his radio show, he sometimes has disagreed with me. I asked him about those comments, and he said, 'You should have heard what I said about the other guy.'"

Snow thanked Bush for the job and told reporters, "Believe it or not, I want to work with you."

Bush also addressed reporters directly. "Tony already knows most of you and he's agreed to take the job anyway," he said with a laugh.

Snow, in an Associated Press interview Tuesday, didn't dispute that he's been a tough critic of Bush. "It's public record," he said. "I've written some critical stuff. When you're a columnist, you're going to criticize and you're going to praise."

A liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, circulated a sampling of Snow's opinions, restricting the observations to those critical of the president. For example, it quoted Snow in September as writing, "No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives."

Snow is a smooth-talking Washington insider in a White House led by Texans proud of their outsider status. He is a familiar face to White House reporters and is known as a conservative partisan.

"He will bring a lot of outside perspective to this White House and that will be helpful," said McClellan, who has served as Bush's chief spokesman - the most prominent public figure in the White House after Bush - for nearly three years.

McClellan said Snow planned to start the week of May 8 but would not begin conducting the daily press briefings for several days. McClellan said he had not decided on departure date yet, but would have some overlap with Snow.

One factor in Snow's decision to take the job was that he had his colon removed last year and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer. He had a CAT scan last week and delayed a decision while he consulted with his doctors.

Snow has been the host of the "Tony Snow Show" on Fox News Radio and "Weekend Live with Tony Snow" on the Fox News Channel. He served in the first Bush administration as speechwriting director and later as a deputy assistant to the president for media affairs.

Snow will be joining my dentist (Dr. Butcher) as a member of the proper job club.

__________________
Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

I wonder if the Opinionator will have a problem defending Decider's policies, especially those which he's previously criticized. Should be interesting, indeed.

Snow job.

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

What did Leno say??

This fellow must defend the polices of the administration no matter what........pretty much the same thing he does now........so........it's like a lateral move.........

Was Joe Lockhart a Republican?

Published on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Mike McCurry & the Hostile Takeover of the Democratic Party
by David Sirota


Since my book, Hostile Takeover, is a look at how both parties engage in corruption, people have asked me a lot lately for good examples of exactly who is leading the Hostile Takeover of the Democratic Party on behalf of Big Money interests. While there are certainly a lot of examples, today it seems the best example comes in the form of Mike McCurry.

The former Clinton press secretary, who appears throughout the media billed as a party strategist, is now using his skills to try to destroy the Internet on behalf of the big telecom companies. That's not a surprise - McCurry is now raking in cash from those companies trying to get Congress to legalize a system that would split the Internet into two classes - big corporations that are forced to fork over cash to the telecom companies in their extortion scheme, and the rest of us (for more on the net neutrality debate, see this site - http://www.savetheinternet.com.

What is a surprise is how dishonest McCurry is in twisting the facts. Also shocking is how he is publishing material pushing the telecom industry's agenda without disclosing that he is making cash off his advocacy from those same telecom companies. You'll notice in this op-ed in the right-wing fringe Washington Times today, McCurry's tag line lists him only as "press secretary to President Bill Clinton 1995-1998," "a partner at Public Strategies Washington" and "co-chairman of 'Hands Off the Internet' which is euphemistically labeled "a policy advocacy group" - instead of a front group to push the telecom industry's agenda.

I'd like to believe that "McCurry is a nice and a smart guy," as blogger Matt Stoller generously says. But call me jaded, but I've worked in politics long enough to know that someone who deliberately deceives people on behalf of Big Money interests in order to screw over average Americans may be smart, but certainly isn't "nice" - no matter how affable he may be among his fellow elitists on the DC cocktail party circuit.

McCurry represents a sickening breed of operative in the nation's capital - people who are absolutely comfortable with using their experience in public service to then shaft the very public they had previously served. That's, of course, understandable among Republican operatives, who even in public service, don't make much of a real effort to claim they are doing anything but trying to sell off our country to the highest bidder.

But it is particularly disgusting among so-called "Democrats" like McCurry. Their high-profile Benedict Arnold acts only reinforce to the public that the Democratic Party in Washington is just as corrupt as the Republican Party. As Hostile Takeover details, D.C. is, quite literally, swarming with former Democratic operatives who cashed in their public service to do Corporate America's bidding. The practice is so common among Democrats it has become mundane. If you don't think McCurry's sickening behavior shows this, then just look at the recent launch of the "Hamilton Project" whereby a bunch of Democratic-officeholders-turned-Wall-Street-fat-cats stood up at the Brookings Institution, declared themselves saviors of the Democratic Party and then dishonestly disparaged Democrats as "protectionists" while promising to wage a war on grassroots groups like organized labor that make up the foundation of the Democratic Party.

This behavior has become the norm - not the exception - in D.C.'s Democratic Party circles. Any moral questions are about how disgusting or wrong this behavior is are seen in Washington as a cause for laughter, not pause. And that leads us to the hard truth: Until it becomes unacceptable in Democratic Party culture for high-profile operatives to brazenly sell out like this, Democrats in Washington are going to face continued - and justifiable - skepticism from the public that they represent the real "change" that the party claims.

David Sirota is a writer and veteran political strategist. He just completed a book for Random House's Crown Publishers entitled "Hostile Takeover." Sirota is currently the co-chairperson of the Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN)- a position he took after finishing a two-year stint at the Center for American Progress. Sirota is currently a Senior Editor at In These Times magazine, and a regular contributor to The Nation magazine. He is also a twice-weekly guest on the Al Franken Show.