Decision ‘08

Welcome To The Show, Snow

Ari Fleischer puts the Tony Snow appointment in context:

…[A]s Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, will soon discover, the briefing is no longer a briefing, it’s a TV show.

Gone are the days when this daily session was a serious affair, with mostly serious questions asked and mostly serious answers given. Instead, the public is now treated to a spectacle in which the media do their best to pressure the White House, regardless of which party is in power, into admitting that much of what the president is doing is wrong, and the White House pushes back. The two sides talk past each other, and the viewing public gets to watch a good fight.

Maybe so, but others see the Snow pick as an attempt to mend fences:

President Bush’s decision to hire conservative commentator Tony Snow as his chief spokesman reflects a consensus among the president and his top advisers that his White House operation has been too insular and needs to be more aggressive in engaging with the news media and other Washington constituencies, according to Bush aides and outside advisers.

It will be interesting to see Snow in action, particularly how he handles his first real crisis…