Cutting and Running from the Press Briefing

At today's White House Press Briefing, Paula Wolfson pushed Tony Snow to the wall with a very simple, black-and-white question:

Q Tony, a question not about the legal process, but about a previous White House statement. In 2003, this White House made it very clear that neither Scooter Libby nor Karl Rove was involved in the leak. Does that public denial need to be corrected?

MR. SNOW: Again, you're asking me things that predate me, and I'm not going to try to get into parsing it.

Umm - just one quick question. How hard is it to "parse" that? In 2003 Bush said neither Libby nor Rove was involved, period, end of story. She's asking if that statement needs correcting.

Now, I can see Tony's problem. If it does need correcting, then maybe Rove was involved, maybe Bush was, maybe... who knows? It opens a can of worms. If it doesn't, though, Snow's implying that Libby was unjustly convicted, and that's passing comment on the trial, which he's been steadfastly refusing to do since before it started, not to mention the sheer ridiculousness of it.

So it's hard to handle that question - but to parse it? I don't think so, Tony.

Back to Paula's question - picking up directly from where we left off:

Q Well, in that respect, though, then why did the President change the grounds of dismissal for "anyone involved" to "anyone convicted"? And would it be accurate --

MR. SNOW: I'm not sure that there has been a change, Paula. I just --

Q Well, there's a difference between "anyone involved" and "anyone convicted," isn't there? I mean, you can act unethically, but not be proven to have acted --

MR. SNOW: Well again, you've bundled a whole lot of things -- a lot of presumptions into a question, and I'm not sure I accept any of them.

Q But what is the policy? Is it "anyone involved," or "anyone convicted"?

MR. SNOW: You know, I'm going to let the President's words stand.

Thank you.

Q But they were different words.

MR. SNOW: I don't think so. The words have been pretty consistent.

And thus ended the press briefing.

Long sigh. Shaking head. Oh, Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony.

They have not been consistent. They have changed. And of course you don't want to deal with it.

Because if you did, you'd have to explain why Karl Rove still has a job. At the very least.