The problem with being a political commentator is that your words can come back to haunt you when the political tides change — or your job does.
“What kinds of conversations does executive privilege protect?…What are the limits on privilege?” a newspaper columnist wrote in the spring of 1998 on a subject strangely familiar today.
“Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration,” the columnist wrote. “Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything.”
“Sounds like you’re reading an old column of mine,” Tony Snow, the Bush administration’s press secretary, said today, readily recognizing his nine-year-old words read back to him today at a press gaggle in which Snow was arguing for Bush’s right to protect the internal deliberations of his White House staff.
Snow insists the situation is completely different today. Which, of course, it is in two major ways. First, it’s a Republican President. Second, Snow is paid to represent him, not to criticize him.
(In fairness, I strongly suspect you could find some defenders of Clinton’s position today amongst the detractors of Bush’s.)
(via BD, originally cited in the comments here)