Tony the Snow Man

Boy I really don't envy his job. Here is Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary, having to go out to that podium every day and deal with an increasingly volatile press corps, and basically try and spin to such an extent, that he sounds like he's wearing rose-colored glasses while living in Wonderland. I suppose the journalists aren't as trepidacious now that we have an incoming Democratic Congress and a lame duck president.
One simple question is all it takes to start the feeding frenzy, and Snowjob has to work it for all it's worth. Now he's trying to tell us there's more than one definition for the word "winning"due to Robert Gates' assessment that we aren't winning in Iraq.
You really can't make this stuff up!

From the White House Press Briefing of December 5th, 2006:

Q Does the President today believe that we are winning in Iraq? It's a very straightforward question.

MR. SNOW: I know, but I did not ask him the question today. The most recently asked, he said, "yes."

Q Okay, so that might change from day to day. So it may have changed --

MR. SNOW: No, I don't --

Q -- he may no longer believe that we're winning the war in Iraq. You don't know.

MR. SNOW: I have no reason to think it changed, but also, again, go back and take a look at the broader answer that Bob Gates gave and ask yourself, is this consistent or inconsistent with what the President has been saying? I think you're going to find it's very consistent.

Q Why is it consistent if he said -- he said we're neither winning, nor losing. He didn't say we were winning.

MR. SNOW: Then he proceeded to talk about the very challenges the President has been discussing in terms of developing capability on the Iraqi side of an Iraq that can sustain, govern and defend itself. So what you may have are two guys who are looking at different definitions. I don't know. I don't want to try to read their minds. But what I do think is important in taking a full look at what Bob Gates was doing is then to take a look at when he started drilling down. What did he talk about? Precisely the same things that the President has been discussing for weeks and weeks and weeks.

April.

Q Even though it was precisely the same thing, he said, we are not winning, and --

MR. SNOW: No, he said -- I believe the answer was, either "yes, sir," or "no, sir."

Q And then he went into the fact that "but we're not losing." But this administration has said we are winning. Leading up to the midterm elections, President Bush was asked pointedly at his press conference, are we winning? He said, yes, we're winning, and he went on to explain why. He explained why we're not winning. You from this podium said --

MR. SNOW: No, I don't believe -- what Bob Gates -- I don't believe that Bob Gates said that we were --

Q He supported his statement. And you from that --

MR. SNOW: But how did he support it? Did he support the statement by saying anything that was inconsistent with what the President has said? And I don't think he did.

Q But his statement is inconsistent with what the administration says. The President has said, we are winning. You from that podium said, we're winning --

MR. SNOW: Right.

Q -- but we haven't won.

MR. SNOW: Right.

Q He said -- he agreed that we are not winning. So how is that consistent --

MR. SNOW: And he also said we're not losing.

Q But how is that consistent? The President never said, we're not losing. How is that consistent?

MR. SNOW: Because -- okay, because they may have -- I don't know what the definitions are...