Keep your friends close, your enemies closer

One of my favorite blogs, and a Daily Read on TBWA's blog-roll to the left (pun intended), 'Think Progress' rounded up a ton of quotes yesterday from new Press Secretary and former Fox “News” talking head Tony Snow, primarily coming from his radio show and his Fox "News" appearances.

(BTW, click HERE to read an agreeable op-ed piece from the Washington Post by the first Bush PS, Ari Fleischer)

Take a moment, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee and take a gander at some of the more memorable quotes and potshots that Snow has taken at Bush.

But... before I give you some of the priceless quotes, consider this if you will: naming Snow as Press Secretary could very well be a brilliant logistical move by the Bush Administration.

You’re all saying to yourselves; ‘‘Huh? How?’’

Follow me for a moment… Bush hires someone who has made negative comments against Bush, and the comments are well-documented. Add to that that the appointment itself was regarded as “news” and that most of the media attending the White House briefings will be pestering Snow about his quotes during the first few weeks of his tenure.

They’ll be questioning Snow about his anti-Bush remarks of the past while ignoring the daily going-ons of the Administration. (editors note: Ignoring the daily going-ons of the administration will hereafter be referred to as a 'Snow Job' - sorry to interrupt folks, Scott)

So you have to ask yourself; what will the administration be doing during that time??

Maybe I’m being a paranoid nudnik. Maybe I’ve seen one too many articles about conspiracies.

Or maybe… just maybe… I’m right on the money.

Or maybe they hired him in order to, as my esteemed colleague Scott suggested, silence a critical conservative voice...

Stranger things have happened...

Anyway, here are some of the better anti-Bush quotes from new White House Press Secretary Tony “Don’t call me Scott” Snow:

• “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.” [3/17/06]
• “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” [11/11/05]
• “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [9/30/05]
• “When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can’t say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn’t seem to mean what he says.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]
• “George W. Bush, meanwhile, talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother’s attractive feistiness, but he also got his father’s syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” [8/25/00]
• “He recently tried to dazzle reporters by discussing the vagaries of Congressional Budget Office economic forecasts, but his recitation of numbers proved so bewildering that not even his aides could produce a comprehensible translation. The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malapropos make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.” [8/25/00]
• ON BUSH’S MEDICARE AND EDUCATION POLICIES: “Bill, how does the president persuade conservatives in his own party that he’s one of them, given what we’ve seen with spending? You’ve seen Medicare, you’ve seen an education bill. These are things, I dare say, that if they’d been done under Bill Clinton, Republicans would have been howling.” [Fox News Sunday, 11/30/03]
• ON THE RULE OF LAW: “The president, in his responsibilities as commander in chief, sometimes has to do things that may or may not comport with the law…[T]he argument has always been that the constitutional obligation to serve as commander in chief sometimes pushes aside contemporary laws. [O’Reilly Factor, 1/20/06]

Strange but true...