After having endured years of the comedy stylings of a bumbling War President who variously describes himself the Decider Guy or the Commander Guy, the circle has finally closed around an alter ego that is a far more believable persona for our little chameleon.

Aboard Air Force One, the President’s press secretary, Tony Snow, presided over what he called a “speed gaggle.” Near the end, a reporter managed to squeeze out a probing question:

Question: “Tony, if the President can order the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia not to pursue criminal contempt charges, doesn’t that sort of put him in the position of being able to determine unilaterally what executive privilege is?”

That seems like a nicely pointed question that reasonably seeks an explanation for an apparent overreaching on the part of the White House. Let’s see how Tony handles it.

Mr. Snow: “Well, the President can assert executive privilege, but you’ve misstated the way this works. In fact, the Department of Justice has the responsibility — the Department of Justice has already published an opinion; furthermore, there is a longstanding series of opinions out of the Department of Justice from Democratic and Republican administrations that talk about the inapplicability of criminal contempt of Congress citations when it comes to people asserting executive privilege.

So, number one, the President is not issuing orders; this is something that falls under the purview of the Department of Justice. And number two, legal precedent all points in one way and it would not be the way contemplated by the House Judiciary Committee.”

Holy Transformer, Batman! The Deciding Commander Guy has turned into the Not Issuing Orders Guy. What makes this even more fantabulous is that it is wholly untrue that the Department of Justice has responsibility for asserting executive privilege. That is an authority reserved for the President. But even if the DoJ did have jurisdiction, it would be just a tiny bit unseemly for them to exercise it when the subject of the investigation is the Attorney General himself.

However, things may not be quite as bad as they appear when you consider that this Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is uniquely qualified to assert a privilege he doesn’t have and then conveniently forget that he had done so.