I watched the White House press conference yesterday. Long-time press corps matriarch Helen Thomas tried to rant about the administration’s international surveillance of potential terrorist communications. She repeated her talking points over and over while Tony Snow diffused her poison apples until she was silenced by this last exchange:
Image: Helen Thomas prepares a poison apple for Tony Snow
Thomas: Privacy was breached by turning over their phone numbers.
Snow: Well, again, you are jumping to conclusions about a program, the existence of which we will neither confirm, nor deny.
Thomas: Why? Don’t you think the American people have a right to know–
Snow: Because–what’s interesting is, there seems to be a notion that because the president has talked a little bit about one surveillance program and one matter of intelligence gathering, that somehow we have to tell the entire world we have to make intelligence gathering transparent. Let me remind you, it’s a war on terror, and there are people–I guarantee you, al Qaeda does not believe–
Thomas: He doesn’t have a right to break the law, does he?
Snow: No, the president is not talking about breaking the law. But al Qaeda doesn’t believe in transparency. What al Qaeda believes in is mayhem, and the president has a constitutional obligation and a heartfelt determination to make sure we fight it.
Tony then went on to the next reporter while the wicked witch Thomas sputtered her way to silence.
Perhaps James Taranto of National Review Online made the best point about Tony Snow’s value to the White House when he wrote this about Thomas in his Best of the Web column yesterday:
All you have to do to win an argument with Helen Thomas is let her gibber; she discredits herself with her outlandish and tendentious statements. It’s to Snow’s credit that he’s not satisfied outwitting her by default but instead used her embarrassing performance to make a serious and substantive point. This is what we need more of from the White House.
More and more I think Dubya made an excellent choice when he named Tony Snow to be Press Secretary.