From the New York Times:
Tony Snow draped his lanky frame across a wooden lectern, leaned forward and gazed out at 850 adoring Republicans who had paid $175 apiece to hear him speak. There was a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, as if he was about to reveal some deep inner secret from his new life as the White House press secretary.
"Yesterday," Mr. Snow declared, "I was in the Oval Office with the president ----"
He cut himself off, took a perfectly calibrated three-second pause and switched into an aw-shucks voice for dramatic effect: "I just looove saying that! Yeaaah, I was in the Oval Office. Just meeee and the president. Nooooobody else." The crowd lapped it up.
Live from the suburbs of Chicago -- It's the Tony Snow Outside-the-Beltway Hour! Memo to White House press corps: you can't catch this show in the briefing room.
In the six months since Mr. Bush enlisted him to resuscitate a White House press operation that was barely breathing, Mr. Snow, a former Fox News television and radio host and a conservative commentator, has reinvented the job with his snappy sound bites and knack for deflecting tough questions with a smile. Now, he is reinventing it yet again, by breaking away from the briefing room to raise money for Republicans, as he did here on Saturday night for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.
Mr. Snow, who will make 16 such appearances before Election Day, acknowledged he had entered "terra incognita"; to his knowledge, no other White House press secretary has raised money for political candidates while in the job. But with his star power from television and his conservative credentials, Mr. Snow, unlike his predecessors, is in hot demand.
No shit. There is a reason no other press secretary has done it. It is because you are not supposed to. But leave it to Republicans to embrace the wrong and act like the wrong has always been right.
His booking agent is the White House political shop, run by Karl Rove, the president's chief strategist. The White House is not keeping track of how much money Mr. Snow raises. His talks -- Saturday night's was a cross between a one-man show and a religious revival -- have attracted little scrutiny so far, but they are giving a much-needed boost to a party whose midterm fortunes appear increasingly bleak.
Yet even as the Republican establishment revels in his celebrity -- "It's like Mick Jagger at a rock concert," Mr. Rove said -- Mr. Snow's extracurricular activities are making some veteran Washington hands, including those with strong Republican ties, deeply uneasy.
"The principal job of the press secretary is to present information to reporters, not propaganda," said David R. Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and also advised President Bill Clinton. "If he is seen as wearing two hats, reporters as well as the public will inevitably wonder: is he speaking to us now as the traditional press secretary, or is he speaking to us as a political partisan?"
...
Kenneth J. Duberstein, former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Snow must be careful not to damage that credibility.
"His profile should not be a political profile," Mr. Duberstein said, "but a press profile on behalf of the president."
...
It is often said that the White House press secretary serves two masters: the president and the press, which relies on the press secretary to advocate for the release of information. Mr. Snow believes that is true -- to a point.
"The press secretary serves two masters," he said, "but not all masters are equal."
That gets back to his decision to headline fund-raisers, a decision he says he made only after soliciting the advice of colleagues, including the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers. Mr. Snow said he set his own ground rules and would quit raising money if it interfered with his day job.
How will he know? "I have the feeling that all of us will know," he said. "You kind of know it when you see it."
Mr. Gergen sees this as the final "blurring of the lines between politics and news and entertainment." Mr. Fleischer says those lines blurred long ago.
"The modern-day briefing is not a briefing but a TV show," he said, "and Tony is the star."
Mr. Snow said his stardom was only "the reflected glory of the president." But on Saturday night, as he basked in the spotlight, his face beaming out at the crowd from six oversize screens, he looked awfully happy when he said, "Let me bring you greetings from the president of the United States."
Mr. Snow, that is not glory that is being reflected upon you.
It is sleaze. Yeah, it looks shiny, so I understand how you would be confused.
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