Praise abounds for all-around newsman, commentator, and presidential press secretary Tony Snow — “the best ever, without qualification,” says John Podhoretz. 

He could speak with fluency, honesty, wit, and clarity on every subject under the sun; he remained poised, unruffled, and as sure of himself at the podium in the press room as he was on that boat in the Potomac nearly two decades earlier.

But this from Brendan Miniter tells about him in a way most memorably:

I last saw Tony several years ago as he was heading out the door of a Starbucks in Alexandria, Va., on his way to work. He wasn’t rushing. He had time for a man who was asking for spare change. Tony reached into his pocket, dug out several coins and at least one bill and handed it to the man. I saw Tony step closer to the man and heard him ask how he was. As the door closed, I couldn’t hear what else he said, but as Tony walked away both were smiling.

Confident in his benevolence.

John K, Wilson, author of Barack Obama, This Improbable Quest, takes a shot at rebutting Dennis Byrne, who accused O. of flip-flopping in the matter of campaign financing.  Before, he was for it (taking fed money and calling off fund-raising), later he was against it (broken system, can’t condone it, can’t employ it, like a broken PC: can’t use it, you know, have to get a Mac).

Not so, says Wilson, who blogs at www.obamapolitics.com — “Barack Obama is quickly becoming America’s most popular politician” — and has criticized the U. of Colorado committee that punished prof Ward Churchill as “opening the door to a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses that conservatives could easily exploit across the country.” 

“Obama never made an unconditional promise to take public funding,” says Wilson in a letter to Chi Trib editor that identifies him as author of his book, which he would dearly like us all to know about — I didn’t — which is unusual in letter-writer (“Voice of the People”) identifications.  Wouldn’t we all like our books given such display?  The letters editor would be swamped.

To Wilson: What was the condition O. set?  And what’s this “agreement” vs. “promise”?  Publicly made, of course, to gain advantage in campaign sweepstakes.

“I defy Byrne to offer a single example,” says this doughty campaigner-book author. 

Byrne accuses Obama’s campaign of “shading the truth” because “it implies that all the money comes from small contributions of $5, $10 or $20.”

But this was the entire import of O’s agreement-not-a-promise, was it not?  That he as reformer would take the supposed reformer’s path?  Wilson missed that?

Again the bluster, reminiscent of “I would challenge” to Chicago newsies to “dispute that basic fact” — that he’s not a typical Chicago politician:

Unless Byrne can come up with a single example in which Obama’s campaign claimed that all of its money comes from $20 donations or less, he’s “shading the truth” and owes Obama–and his readers–an apology.

En garde, Byrne!  We bloggers at obamapolitics.com want to joust!  Make our day!

Big O. and the gang should call this guy off, especially in view of its claim that this was “an extremely difficult decision.”

Of course.  Breaking (up) an agreement is always hard to do.