From Newsroom to White House
Eastland, Terry
From Newsroom to White House Tony Snow, 1955-2008. BY TERRY EASTLAND Tony Snow was two years out of college when he got his fi rst job in journalism. I was editor of the editorial page of...
...God doesn’t promise us tomorrow,” he wrote last year in Christianity Today, “but he does promise us eternity— fi lled with life and love we cannot comprehend...
...While at the Times, Tony began doing radio and television...
...Inevitably, another paper—the one across the bay in Newport News—asked him to be its editorial page editor...
...That, together with the fact that his references spoke highly of his character, persuaded me to hire him...
...He was the obvious choice...
...Exposed to Limbaugh’s huge, nationwide audience, Tony gained his own following...
...When Fox News Channel was launched in 1996, it needed to attract an audience and asked Tony to anchor its Sunday morning talk show...
...BY TERRY EASTLAND Tony Snow was two years out of college when he got his fi rst job in journalism...
...Tony broke with what might be called White House press secretarial precedent by being the featured speaker at GOP fundraisers...
...And he was a reliable deputy...
...He told me several times about the books he was reading, which included titles by C.S...
...For by his faith he understood that there is more to come...
...Here, as throughout his career, he had confi dence that something better would open up for him...
...But he didn’t fear his cancer...
...Looking back, you could say he was being prepared to deal with the colon cancer that was discovered in 2005 and took his life the week before last...
...But he fi gured out how to write editorials, and on deadline, and his pieces fi t well enough into our conservative page...
...Tony told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that the ghost of colon cancer had stalked him from the time she died until the time he got it...
...You could easily imagine him running for high office...
...He learned to lay out pages, and he wrote a few reviews for the morning paper, the Greensboro Daily News (which eventually absorbed the Record...
...He became a student of politics and wrote editorials informed by solid reporting...
...Fox gave him less compelling assignments but also a radio show...
...He developed one of those multimedia careers that seem to thrive in the nation’s capital...
...Tony applied for the job...
...Even so, I had no idea whether he could write on deadline, though he was confi dent he could...
...But, as he knew, that would have been a merely earthly ambition...
...And so it did in 2006 when he became White House press secretary...
...He had that kind of star power...
...His visibility as a conservative was such that he came to the attention of the fi rst Bush White House and eventually was hired as chief speechwriter...
...In 2003 Fox moved Tony out of that job...
...Public policy often bored him...
...The Detroit News hired him next, and then, in 1987, the Washington Times made him its editorial page editor, his fi fth newspaper job in eight years...
...It’s still hard for me to believe that the young man I fi rst met in Greensboro almost 30 years ago is no longer with us...
...If Tony was a man well suited to his time, however, he did not regard this life as all there is...
...His mother had died of the same disease when he was 17...
...He might well have become a politician...
...Indeed, he redefined the position, drawing on his experiences in both old and new media to serve the White House press corps and President Bush...
...It was in the early ’90s that Rush Limbaugh began using Tony when he needed a substitute...
...I sensed that during his time at Davidson College he had been attracted to some left-wing causes but that now he was taking a fresh look at the world...
...Tony had thought for some time that he’d eventually have his own show, but he never expected to get it this way...
...He said that it drew him closer to God and for that reason was a blessing...
...Tony loved the job...
...Terry Eastland is publisher of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...His career in journalism and government occurred during an era when conservatives either held or signifi cantly infl uenced the exercise of power, and when the old media establishments, often purveyors of liberal news, found their ability to set the nation’s agenda weakened, thanks to the emergence of new media, including talk radio and cable television news and, of course, the web...
...It was a setback, but he didn’t complain about it...
...Tony’s interests turned out to be more literary and philosophical than political...
...When I fi rst met Tony, he was not an unbeliever, but he was not exactly a churchman, either...
...And, learning from some early bumps in the road, he was very good at it...
...Nor was it clear where he would fall politically...
...His Christian faith began to deepen...
...And while he knew that his cancer could kill him, he refused to see death as the end of the story...
...In the ’90s, when his career was taking off, his interest in ultimate things intensifi ed...
...It was his greatest achievement, as jobs go...
...In political terms, he acquired a base...
...He was learning the business, as they say, and in 1981, when I went to Norfolk to edit the editorial page of our parent company’s fl agship paper, the Virginian-Pilot, I hired Tony a second time...
...When he went back to journalism, Tony wrote a syndicated column and did a lot of television and radio, along with as many speeches as he could...
...The rap was that he didn’t press hard enough in interviews...
...I think that was a turning point in his career...
...He had no “clips” as such, but the several pieces of writing he submitted showed he could compose a decent sentence...
...It’s too bad Bush didn’t think to hire Tony in 2001...
...Lewis...
...I think it was while he was in Norfolk that Tony, who had considered other lines of work, decided to stick with newspapers...
...One summer I sent Tony to the newsroom so he could have the experience of actually reporting stories...
...Such optimism is grounded in the bedrock teaching of Christianity, which is that the crucifi ed, dead, and buried Christ by his resurrection has destroyed “the last enemy,” which is death itself...
...He had credibility with the press, and he could intelligently argue the administration’s case...
...I was editor of the editorial page of the Greensboro Record, the afternoon daily in Greensboro, N.C., and I needed an editorial writer...
Vol. 13 • July 2008 • No. 43
