Tony Snow: We Shall Probably Never See the Likes of Him Again

Tony Snow is now officially no longer a mouthpiece for the Bush administration. This after spending the first five years of the Bush administration as an unofficial mouthpiece in his masterful performance as a journalist on what threatens to one day eclipse The Simpsons as television's longest running sitcom: Fox News. The job of Presidential press secretary should probably be ranked among the worst jobs in America. It is essentially thankless as you are forced to face a press that at least used to be ravenous in doing their job, though for the most of this decade those in the White House press room have been a particularly toothless and gummy bunch. But even when you replace the likes of Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson with the likes of Brit Hume, Chris Wallace or Wolf Blitzer, and you've got a President so lacking in a spine that his concerted avoidance of calling on the grande dame of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas, it can still prickly. The iconic image of the role that the White House Press Secretary has historically played is the image of Richard Nixon physically pushing Ron Ziegler out of the room.