James Taranto at Opinion Journal notes that Tony Snow hasn’t spared Bush from some rather harsh criticisms. Snow wrote a column last month that was none to favorable to the President:
American conservatives have discovered the will-and-morale-sapping properties of political power. A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.
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. The president has taken lately to crowing that the Medicare prescription drug benefit will cover 95 percent of all drug expenditures for some of the nation’s old and poor, and is telling younger Americans they have a duty to enroll their parents in the new regime of socialized pharmaceuticals.
My reaction to this: it’s about damn time. I always found the arguments that Bush surrounded himself with yes-men (and yes-women) to be somewhat spurious – then came Harriet Miers. A debacle of that magnitude could only come about in an Administration that had grown insular and isolated from political common sense. I believe that many of the problems that Bush is having in connecting with the public originate from this essential problem – and as much as it pains me to say it, some of the critics of the President were right. (As in “a broken clock is right twice a day” right.) Bush needs someone who’s willing to say “this is a politically tone deaf idea, and we’re going to get our asses handed to us if we propose this. Let’s rethink this.”
Even when Bush has been right on the policy, his political presentation sucks. He’s mishandled a lot of very crucial issues, and his second term has been rudderless and filled with vague promises and no real policy direction. The issues we face, energy, Iraq, terrorism, the economy, globalization, etc., all require active political leadership from the Administration – despite the unending hostility of the mainstream media.
I hope Tony Snow doesn’t change his positions and acts with the reputation for integrity he earned during his tenure as a journalist – the Administration badly needs someone willing to stand up and keep them from making the boneheaded political mistakes they’ve made over the last two years.
A Press Secretary is the ultimate sock puppet. Tony Snow has actually taken “The Decider” to task in the past year. How can that make him “the right choice” unless he throws his convictions to the wind? Do you really believe Snow will be any less of a “yes man” than any other member of Bush’s staff that wasn’t immediately hoodwinked like Paul O’Neill?