Will Tony Snow's gab be the gift that keeps on giving?

Friday, April 28, 2006

First Flak: Tony Snow piled up a lot of firsts in his first week as White House press secretary. He's the first pundit to take the job, a talking head turned mouthpiece instead of the other way around. He's reportedly the first press secretary to negotiate a policy role (but happily, did not have his agent demand a private dressing room). He's the first disgruntled conservative to be won over by being given a place in the president's inner circle. If only Bush had 10 million more job openings at the White House, his wayward base would be secure.

But with just a thousand days left in a lame-duck administration, Snow should strive to be more than just the answer to a Beltway trivia question. From his new platform, he has the chance and the talent to push the limits of another frontier – the English language.

Over the years, press secretaries have contributed much to the political lexicon. Ron Ziegler set the standard in another scandal-ridden second-term presidency, giving us cult classics like "third-rate burglary" and "This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative." Until then, no one in politics had used "inoperative" since Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers: "It would therefore be destitute of a precise meaning, and inoperative from its uncertainty."

I know Tony Snow, and he's no Ron Ziegler. He's smart, easy to like, and a good choice for the sequestered Bush White House.

But Snow's background gives him the ideal combination of talents to make his way into the quotation books. Snow is not just aptronymonic, he is ambi-phonic – a man who has made a career as both a professional writer and a professional talker.

If you want to know how rare this combination is, try reading what Bill O'Reilly writes or listening to Kevin Phillips talk. The gift for gab that makes for easy listening in a talking head is usually grating in print, while literary pugilism can be annoyingly nasal on the air.

Failure to Launch: What do you get when you mix a Bush 41 speechwriter with a Sunday celebrity from Fox? Well, if Peggy Noonan and Terry Bradshaw had a grown son together, he might sound a lot like Tony Snow. To paraphrase Stevie Wonder, baloney and irony go together in perfect harmony.

It's too early to predict whether these talents will combine for greatness or disaster. But so far, the results look promising. Asked by Cox News whether he would be frank with the president, Snow delivered this gem:

"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. And at this particular juncture I think what you want is as much honest counsel as you can get."