SNOW BLOWS

The freshly appointed White House spokesman hasn't done a briefing, but he's got plenty of ideas on how to improve press relations with the Bush Administration. According to ABC's The Note, Snow is all about window-dressing. Or so it seems, based on this memo from Snow to his new bosses.

A few grafs:

The number one thing we need to do is RE-HUMANIZE THE PRESIDENT. All my other suggestions are just variations on that theme. People WANT to like this President, and we need to give them more chances. They love the regular guy thing that worked so well for you in the first campaign, and we need to tap back into that on a regular basis as a fundamental part of our communications strategy, not a when-can add-on.

There's nothing the Press shop can do about facts on the ground, but we can HELP people remember why they originally liked the President so much. In December and January, Dan and Nicolle did a great job of getting the President out more, talking to the pool nearly every day and answering all those questions from the good red-blooded, red-stated Americans who come to our events ...

The President looked strong and decisive swinging a hammer down in New Orleans for a few minutes the other day. If he wants to, and I bet he'd be thrilled, let's suggest that he spend a whole day working down there, and really have something to show for it.

In other words, the president is a prop, so let's get him a hammer and make him pound some wood in New Orleans.

Snow is also pushing for gee-whiz graphics at White House press briefings:

[L]et's take a page from the Pentagon and the mega-churches and include some electronic and graphic elements in our presentations. We don't want to be predictable, and a clip that provides a preview of the next day's event might give us two pops where we would have gotten only one.

One upside to the terribly cynical Snow memo is his dismissal of removing cameras from the briefing room. "Obviously, we can't do that," Snow writes, "because it would make the White House look like it was going backwards instead of forwards, and like we had something to hide."