Snow Job: Coming Out Fighting

The McClellatron’s replacement is wasting no time in letting the press know exactly where he stands. Are you totally shocked, like I am, that it turns out the erstwhile Fox anchor has contempt for any press who gives the vaguest appearance of not being irrepressible presidential taint-lickers?

New White House Press Secretary Tony Snow is starting off in a combative mode against the press by issuing detailed rebuttals to what he considers unfair coverage of Bush.

“The New York Times continues to ignore America’s economic progress,” blared the headline of an e-mail sent to reporters Wednesday by the White House press office.

Minutes earlier, another e-mail blasted CBS News…

On Tuesday, the White House railed against “USA Today’s misleading Medicare story.”

…White House sources said Snow, who started on the job Monday and has yet to give his first public press briefing, is determined to aggressively counter what the administration considers unfair assertions in both news and editorials about Bush. At the same time, he is eager to make the notoriously secretive administration more accessible to the press.

The strategy is perfectly clear, but hardly revolutionary. The administration will make itself “more accessible” to press that delivers a constant stream of positive coverage. That’s been the modus operandi since Day One; Snow’s just trying to get back to basics with a press that has ever-so-timidly begun to—gasp!—actually question the administration on occasion. He wants to bully them into being water carriers again who do nothing more than dictate whatever emanates from the White House. I’m sure he’ll have some limited success, but, regardless of their pout-job over Colbert and bloggers and angry liberals, I suspect the press is beginning to realize they’re going to have to start doing better, and sucking off President 31% isn’t going to help restore the credibility they’ve lost.

And any press chained by corporate obligation is, I’ll wager, finding themselves suddenly freer than usual, with conservatives running away from Bush like a radioactive hot potato. The corporatocracy has a vested interest, at this point, in making sure that the utter failure of conservative policy, upon which they are reliant for sweet tax deals and massive hand-outs, is seen instead as a failure of Bush, so even as he sinks into the muck, any vestige of faith in conservative efficacy doesn’t sink with him.

Good luck with all that.