Joel on Tony Snow

As the bouncer in this here bar, I think it's time for you fellas to take your squabble elsewhere...namely, email.

Glad to see you've read your Hitchens, too, Ashish, but I actually don't have a strong opionion about Mother Teresa or Che. That is in large part my own fault -- I just don't really know much about them beyond the common parlance -- but I don't know enough to make any judgments. I agree with you that one need not personally know a person to make a judgment about him or her, however.

I'm flattered, albeit a bit surprised, that you recall my "not well formulated or presented" question for Snow so vividly. The feat is all the more impressive since I only spoke for about ten seconds--hardly enough time to squeeze in a paragraph--before Snow guillotined what I had to say. Are you sure your memory of the event is not one of those self-serving deceptions of which you've admitted your guilt? Perhaps Snow's observation that you reminded him of a younger version of himself was far less complimentary than you thought.

I'm not sure why you think my opinion of Snow is "not grounded in any basis of judgment." I'm judging based on the fact that he (1) lied to us, (2) abetted the deceptions of an administration he apparently had strong disagreements with, and (3) fell short in his public life of the very values Davidson works to bequeath to its students. Since you haven't contested (1) and (2), I assume you don't think these are mere flights of fancy.

You write, "But moreover, 'by NO means' is an exceptionally strong choice of words for judging the character of a person you never really met." Not at all. Your letter supports the idea that Snow was a "really genuine guy", and the adverb makes all the difference. You weren't vouching for Snow's being "fitfully" or "personally" genuine, both of which would have been narrow claims; a really genuine person is, under any plausible reading, fairly consistently so in all aspects of their lives. But again, in his public life as press secretary Snow was consistently not genuine (or, more charitably, genuinely malign), so unqualified praise here would be unwarranted.

The idea that the absence of personal acquaintance should prevent us from issuing emphatic judgments about public figures is also risible. Did you ever smoke a cigar with Che Guevara? Or go to mass with Mother Teresa? No? Well, I'm guessing you have very strong opinions on those two, and I doubt your overall opinion would change very much if you met acquaintances of theirs who assured you Guevara was a considerate friend or that Mother Teresa had a mean streak because--and here's the key part--strong statements aren't exhaustive statements. We can always accommodate a person's redeeming (or negative) traits within a generally negative (or positive) conception. More to the point, if I say, "Suzy Q was by no means a saint", it doesn't mean Suzy Q was incapable of goodness or even that she was a bad person. It just means exactly what it says: calling her a saint would badly miss the mark because she didn't meet the high bar of saintliness. Ditto Tony Snow and his being really (i.e., very or essentially) genuine.

I think the fact that Taylor and I had a similar reaction to your post, Ashish, might indicate that regardless of what you may have meant it to say, it indeed came off in a particularly venomous manner. The phrase "Snow was by no means a “really genuine guy'" is especially strong, and surprising insofar as it is not grounded in any basis of judgment.

But moreover, "by NO means" is an exceptionally strong choice of words for judging the character of a person you never really met. Again, for a philosophy major, I'm surprised to find that your logic is so messy: what does it mean, Ashish, to be a "genuine" person? Are people, whether genuine or not, always consistent, and must one be consistent across public/private lines to be genuine, and by whose measure? I, for one, would like to hope that I am a genuine guy, but I certainly have my fair share of lies, deceptions (to myself and others), and often say one thing and do the other.

As to him interrupting you and not letting you finish -- call it rude if you like, but to call it skillful isn't to morally evaluate it. It was skillful in that he used tact to defuse your question, which was patently neither tactful nor productive, and not well formulated or presented. Your question began with a paragraph-like statement, which given the Q&A circumstances, struck several people sitting near me as rude in itself.

I think both of you are responding with a bit more venom than my post merited. Let's review...

1. Joel echoed the view of Snow's colleagues that Snow was a "really genuine guy."
2. I pointed out that as a public servant and as a speaker at his alma mater that tirelessly stresses integrity to the members of its community, Snow was not above lying (do either of you dispute this?).
3. I concluded this is not consistent with being a genuine guy.

I didn't say Snow was personally unpleasant or that Joel had an inordinate fondness of the memory he mentions. But if a person's private virtues are the same as their public shortcomings, we do ourselves--and the complexity of our subjects--a disservice by attributing to them traits that only tell half the picture. There is no malice in the search for a textured view of a person.

As for Joel's snide non sequitur about my own interaction with Snow, it appears he joins Snow's boosters in being able to only conjure half the truth. Joel's right that Snow swatted aside my question to end the exchange, but he omits or forgets how he did so: by interrupting me and not letting me finish what I was going to ask him. You can call that skillful if you like, but I suspect most would just call it rude.

Ashish, as skilled at political philosophy and rhetoric as you are, it's disappointing that the tack you take in critiquing Snow never really appropriately matches the venue. Case in point being that this was a letter to the editor -- and a personal one at that -- not a political encomium, and a political response to it makes its point indelicately and therefore ineffectively. It wasn't my title, but "Tony Snow off Camera" is an apt one for the letter, yet your response is about "Tony Snow" only insofar as he was the White House Press Secretary for a short time.

Also, anyone who knows me knows that I disagreed with him as much as you do.

The key difference, however, is that during the Q&A session, you tried to pull a "gotcha" with him -- and he rather skillfully pushed your question aside and ended your exchange. He and I, however, went on for a good while, and I was able to critique him far more stridently, and make far many more political points, than you had. So who got carried away?

Ashish, I was merely re-publishing what I considered to be a thoughtful letter, from a friend, about a man who just died tragically young of cancer. You may feel that an official representative of the president should openly criticize that president's policies, but I don't really hold that against him, despite my own political disagreements with said policies. Regardless, the fact of the matter is that the letter addressed Mr. Snow's personal kindness...something you, and I, did not directly experience. Nor did Tony Snow personally wrong you. Let it go--I'm not sure who you expect to read your attack on the recently deceased and say "A-ha! He's right!"

That does sound like an admirable illustration of Snow's affability. But let's not get carried away. Snow was by no means a "really genuine guy." In fact, as I pointed out at the time in The Davidsonian, Snow had so little regard for us as an audience that he casually lied to us about his own view of Bush administration policies. When someone asked him whether or not he had significant disagreements with the administration, he replied in the negative. And yet...

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/25/snow-on-bush/

But hey, if Davidson is going to honor Woodrow Wilson and Dean Rusk--two men with more blood on their hands than a drunk surgeon--as notable alums, I suppose Tony Snow will be one of the least objectionable idols in the pantheon.