The Snow Show

By Ana Marie Cox

On the morning after the North Koreans tested a nuclear device, White House press secretary Tony Snow held one of the informal off-camera "gaggles" that's meant to give reporters some sense of what the Administration's take is on the stories of the day. One reporter began to ask, somewhat playfully, "It seems there's this massive event; now we're waiting for something to happen--" Snow interrupted. "A massive event?" The reporter clarified. "I mean, a big-deal event, that they tested a nuclear--"Snow interrupted again. "A big-deal event?" Surprised, the reporter asked, "It's not?" Said Snow: "There was an event."

It's the kind of exchange that could have made headlines--WHITE HOUSE DISMISSES NUCLEAR TEST AS NO BIG DEAL--but it didn't. The New York Times referenced the exchange in a longer piece about North Korea, but other than that, the pronouncement went unnoticed. I later asked another reporter why. "Well," the reporter explained, "we've come to understand that when he says stuff like that, he's not representing the White House viewpoint, he's just ... Tony being Tony."

Snow regularly finds himself at the outer edge of Bush country, his rhetoric having carried him past the safety of White House talking points. It is lonely out there. This Administration prides itself on message discipline; straying of any kind is usually punished: Adviser Larry Lindsey was fired in 2002 after telling papers that the Iraq war could cost $200 billion; Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was publicly chastised for not backing up White House estimates on troop levels. But Snow's ad-libbing is tolerated, even encouraged. How does he pull it off? It's not just that he is as quick to retract and apologize as he is to--as he has said--"step in it." It's also because the Snow Show, Administration officials believe, is paying off. "He's not the sort of person who's going to be carefully scripted," says chief of staff Joshua Bolten, "but it's a very small price to pay for having someone who is brilliant at capturing and articulating the essence of the policy message." Or at least, getting that message out. White House counselor Dan Bartlett says he has noticed a marked uptick in how much of the press secretary's briefing gets replayed on the nightly news and throughout cable since Snow took the job in April. "If he's not being quoted," says Bartlett, "then usually one of our critics are, so we'd prefer it be him."

Snow has the smooth, slightly exaggerated features of a television news anchor and, of course, he was one. He was the original host of Fox News Sunday. He was editor of the conservative Washington Times editorial page. He filled in regularly for Rush Limbaugh. Then he walked away from a $1.7 million contract with Fox News to become the most famous White House press secretary in history. Even in the White House's West Wing, where restrictions on visitors ensure that no one is just a tourist, his appearance in the hallway can elicit a bubble of giggly Beatlemania; I heard a visiting VIP yelp, "Omigod, I just saw Tony Snow!" His fame--invariably, his colleagues describe him as a "rock star"--has unavoidably changed the very nature of the job. He is more than a mouthpiece; he's a one-man echo chamber, able to riff on the themes of the Bush presidency with a wide smile and a word-a-day-calendar vocabulary. His flamboyant style has drawn the media spotlight just a little off center, away from the President. And these days, the White House doesn't mind.

Sure, the attention was negative when Snow dismissed Congressman Mark Foley's creepy messages to former pages as "naughty e-mails." There was the time Snow likened stem-cell research to murder. He invoked the unfortunate cliche "tar baby" early on, but just as interesting as his missteps are his striking successes. He said Bob Woodward's book, critical of the Bush Administration's handling of Iraq after the invasion, was "like cotton candy--it kind of melts on contact." After John Kerry was caught in a gaffe that appeared to demean the armed forces, Snow thundered, "This is an absolute insult."

The showmanship is a boon beyond the briefing room as well. Snow hit the campaign trail this fall, an unprecedented move for a White House press secretary. He headlined 17 fund raisers for G.O.P. candidates in the two months leading up to the midterms. Of course, it wasn't just Snow's popularity that put him on the stump. If Snow's conservative bona fides have made him as familiar to the Republican base as Bush is, Snow is also, for the moment, probably better liked. In the end, if a candidate would rather be seen with the press secretary than with the President, then you've got bigger problems than a rock-star spokesman can solve. Check time.com for more examples of "Tony being Tony"