His Majesty was not in a good humor today when he introduced his new press secretary, rightwing radio personality and former journalist Tony Snow, to the White House press corps :

[Snow is] not afraid to express his own opinions. For those of you who have read his columns and listened to his radio show, he sometimes has disagreed with me. I asked him about those comments, and he said, “You should have heard what I said about the other guy.”

The president gurned a certain muffled indignance when he read these words from the briefing book before him, with both Snow and outgoing spokesman Scott McClellan looking on.

Unlike Mr. Bush, I have read what Snow has said about “the other guy(s)” — Gore, Kerry, Dean, Hillary and the rest — and didn’t find that his derogatory comments about his enemies mitigated his criticisms of his own Dear Leader one little bit.

It seems predictable now that hiring Snow will turn out to be another incompetent move by the White House — that he’ll resign soon after the elections this November, if not before — not because of President Bush’s aversion to criticism, but because of Snow’s self worth and survival.

The scandals wrought by the high-fivin’ white guys who run the West Wing have only just begun to seep out into the light of day. They’ll do everything in their power, which is lot, to keep them bottled up until at least Election Day this November.

But their once masterful ability to hide their own faults and foibles from the electorate has lost its magic of late. Only the West Wingers, their lawyers and their prosecutors really know what’s lurking out there.

And they sure as hell haven’t leveled with Tony Snow — who was a highly paid media figure until today. He will not go down with HMS Bush. He has his career to think of, after all.