President Bush on Wednesday named conservative commentator Tony Snow as White
House press secretary, putting a new face on a troubled administration.
Tony Snow smiles as he is introduced by
President Bush as his new Press Secretary in the Brady Press Briefing Room
of the White House in Washington Wednesday, April 26, 2006.
[AP]
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Snow, a Fox news pundit and former
speechwriter in the White House under Bush's father, replaced Scott McClellan
who resigned after nearly three yeas on the job in a personnel shuffle intended
to re-energize the Bush 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.
Bush also joked with reporters: "Tony already knows most of you and he's
agreed to take the job anyway."
Snow, a Fox News commentator and speech-writer in the White House under
Bush's father, has written and spoken frequently about the current president ¡ª
not always in a complimentary way.
Snow called Bush "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 said he asked Snow about the critical remarks. "He said, `You should
have heard what I said about the other guy.'"
On Wednesday, Snow thanked Bush for the job and told reporters, "Believe it
or not, I want to work with you."
"These are times that are going to be very challenging ... and I'm very
excited and I can't wait, and I thank all you guys for your forebearance and I
look forward to working with you," Snow told reporters.
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.
Snow 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 on the White House job 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.