Jay Rosen (The Nation): Forecast for Snow

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Dated Monday May 8

Forecast for Snow
By Jay Rosen

Reason-giving is basic to government by consent of the governed. Very basic. An Administration that doesn't have to give reasons for what it is doing is unaccountable to the American people and their common sense, to world opinion--even to itself. To pressure the CIA director to leave after 20 months in the job, and to give no reason at all for it--not even "spend more time with the family"--is a big screw you to anyone trying to discern what the President is doing and what the government is up to. This is why we have professional journalists as part of our public life. They are supposed to step in when reason-giving falters, and press for an explanation. And if today the White House press corps can't get an explanation for Goss's departure, it will fail some basic test of usefulness.

Especially after Goss called his abrupt departure "one of those mysteries," reporters will, I think, be asking lots of CIA director questions today. Most will be about his chosen replacement, General Michael Hayden, but some will be about Goss. The correspondents know how many shocked people there were in Washington on Friday. They know Goss resigned "under pressure," as the Washington Post said Sunday.

Today Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, is supposed to take over. Thus it's possible we will know right away whether Snow represents a change in White House strategy, or a corrective to the old strategy of de-certifying the press and rolling it back.

What will the new press secretary do when asked to provide an explanation that was glaringly missing on Friday? If you're Scott McClellan, who held his last briefing Friday, you sift through what's already on the record about the resignation and choose a phrase or two that can be safely repeated, no matter what you're asked. Rather than dodge the question, you refuse to recognize it, converting the back-and-forth of Q&A into a series of non-sequiturs. The strategy is to add nothing to the public record, no matter what's missing in the explanations from the White House. Press nullification, I have called this. It's not like spin. It's non-communication from the podium, part of a larger strategy for expanding the "black," opaque or simply unilluminated portions of the presidency.

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