Washington – President Bush reached outside his inner circle Wednesday for the first time in his staff shakeup, naming a new White House spokesman who recently called the president “something of an embarrassment.”
The selection of Tony Snow, a conservative Fox News commentator, broke Bush’s pattern of filling top jobs with trusted loyalists. Snow will take a leading role in White House efforts to reverse Bush’s slide in the polls.
The job will give Snow a chance to put into practice his advice that Bush should be much more aggressive in confronting his critics.
His appointment pleased Republicans who share that view, but skeptics questioned Snow’s ability to influence an organization known for buttoned-down discipline and devotion to the president.
Bush said he was aware of Snow’s past criticism and welcomed his willingness to speak out.
“He sometimes has disagreed with me,” he said in introducing Snow to reporters at the White House. “I asked him about those comments, and he said, ‘You should have heard what I said about the other guy.”‘
Snow, 50, acknowledged he’d have to show deference to the president in his new job, but he said he would make his views known in internal policy debates.
“They want people to express their opinions. You’re not coming here to drink the Kool-Aid. You’re coming here to serve the president,” he said.
Snow’s genial personality masks a fighter’s instinct. He has repeatedly chided Bush for straying from conservative orthodoxy, and he wrote that Bush had become an embarrassment by losing his “swagger factor.”
Snow, who will take over from current White House spokesman Scott McClellan early next month, survived a cancer scare last year that resulted in the removal of his colon. His doctors have declared him cancer free.
He comes to the White House with extensive journalistic experience as a conservative editorialist for newspapers and Fox News, which sets him apart from other recent presidential press secretaries. Having earned a national reputation on his own may free him to speak up in ways beyond that of McClellan, who owed his career to Bush.
