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Bush names Tony Snow press secretary

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 April 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush named Fox News Radio host Tony Snow as White House press secretary on Wednesday in his latest move aimed at giving his staff a new look and breathing new life into his presidency.

Snow, 50, is the first Washington pundit to become White House press secretary and in his role as a conservative commentator he has sometimes criticized the president.

A cancer survivor, Snow is the first journalist to go directly from the media industry to the top spokesman role since Ron Nessen during Gerald Ford's presidency.

He inherits one of the toughest jobs in Washington: Trying to manage the flow of White House information in an era of 24-hour news cycles, and put a fresh face on a White House struggling to fight back from a job approval rating that dropped to 32 percent this week in a CNN poll.

"He's going to work hard to provide you with timely information about my philosophy, my priorities, and the actions we're taking to implement our agenda," Bush said in the White House briefing room with Snow and the long-time Bush loyalist he is replacing, Scott McClellan.

Snow, who starts his job in early May, worked as a speech writer for Bush's father when he was president and has a lengthy resume in print, radio and television journalism, usually in a role as a conservative commentator.

"One of the reasons I took the job is not only because I believe in the president, because believe it or not I want to work with you," Snow told reporters.

In his role as pundit, Snow has sometimes found fault with Bush's policies, particularly on government spending and even the president's sometimes tortured grammar.

Democrats gleefully circulated by e-mail a sampling of Snow's commentary about Bush in recent years, such as a November 11, 2005, column after Democratic electoral gains in which he wrote that ... "George Bush has become something of an embarrassment."

"He's not afraid to express his own opinions," Bush said with a smile. "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."'

"I like his perspective, I like the perspective he brings to this job and I think you're going to like it too," Bush said.

Analysts said it was possible that Snow could make the White House more friendly for reporters but that the key will be whether Snow has the insider role he was said to have wanted as a condition for taking the job.

Reporters most of all want a press secretary who is considered a confidant, such as Jody Powell was during Jimmy Carter's presidency, and doing that would require a major attitude adjustment by Bush himself, said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar and professor at George Washington University.

"There's no way he can be in the inner, inner circle," said Hess. "He hasn't paid his dues enough for that. He can sit at the table, he can even say things, but he understands that."

The press secretary is one of the most visible faces of any administration, conducting daily briefings and sometimes engaging in daily battle with reporters.

Bush's first press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said Snow and other staff changes offer the chance to show Americans that "something new may come from the White House" and that Bush deserves a second look.

"Tony is now going to be the voice of that story. That can help the president. But ultimately it still comes down to two huge issues. One, is the president receiving credit for the boom in the economy, and two, increased calm in Iraq," he said.

"Tony can surely help with the first. The second will be driven by events on the ground," Fleischer said.

Sources familiar with the situation said Snow wrestled with the decision for several days on whether to take the grueling job. He was treated for colon cancer last year.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria)

Source: REUTERS

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