As Fox News Sunday this week celebrated its 25th anniversary, it spent part of its “look back” segment crediting the late Tony Snow for his role as the show’s first, extremely winsome host.
Just as current host Chris Wallace deserves kudos for his even-handed, incisive work in the role for the last 17.5 years, Snow deserves journalistic credit for establishing the show as a place where mutual respect and a basic sense of goodwill predominated.
In private, Snow was just as warm and thoughtful as he appeared on TV. Just as dozens, or more likely hundreds, of media and political professionals today will say, I am indebted to Tony for his kindness and support. Allow then, please, all these 13 years after his death, a fond tribute of a personal nature, in service of a broader point.
I met Tony when I was press secretary for Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana in the early and mid-1990s. Tony, as a columnist at the time, was interested in several of the issues on which we were working. In the course of our discussions, I found that Tony wasn’t just all business but also took an interest in me and my work, and he pressed me about my hopes for the future.
When I mentioned that I was looking to get back into journalism, Tony invited me to lunch near his offices in Rosslyn, right across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. After an hour passed in good conversation interspersed with plenty of Tony’s words of good advice for my quest, I moved to get up, not wanting to take up too much of Tony’s time. He motioned for me to sit back down.
“You said this was a sort of free afternoon for you with Congress out of session, right?” he said. “I’ve got time if you do. Let’s keep talking.” And so it was that Tony gave another hour to me to help me flesh out my plans and give me pointers, all the while acting as if he had nothing more important to do than that.
I ended up following a trail of journalism jobs back outside of the Washington-New York axis, but Tony kept in touch, comparing notes as professional colleagues rather than as a mentor and mentee. Years later, when offered a job back in Washington that offered lots of upsides but also some significant risk, Tony was one of the two people I called for advice.
After hearing me out, he laughed and said that on occasion, it actually makes sense to look to silly movies for good advice. “You know what Tom Cruise said in Risky Business, right?” he said. “You know: Sometimes you’ve just gotta say what the….”
In other words, take the risk. Go for it. So I did.
A year later, Tony was in the White House as former President George W. Bush’s press secretary. He saw a column of mine, but he heard that the personal risk hadn’t actually worked out as hoped, so he called.
“Quin, come on by the White House tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
It was a cold winter day. Tony had a fire going in his White House office. Again, he acted unhurried, as if in the midst of a White House then under massive political fire, he had nothing better to do. “Hey, you’re doing the right things,” he said after nearly an hour. “You’ll land on your feet.”
This was a good, kind man. And my story of Tony’s kindness is far from unique. That’s why so many mourned so deeply when he died of cancer, 17 months after that White House visit. It’s why, any time his name comes up, as it did today on Fox News Sunday, it’s impossible to think of him without gratitude and a smile.
Political Washington needs more of Tony Snow’s decency and humanity. Any chance we get to say as much, we should.
