Tony Snow Knows How to Work More Than One Room

Snow has pushed for the president to grant more interviews -- Bush spoke to every major network during the 9/11 anniversary -- and to continue to hold more news conferences than he did during the first term. As for his own spate of television interviews, Snow says the White House staff thinks he can be helpful, but he is wary of accepting too many bookings.

"You don't want to get overexposed," he says.

Snow initially hesitated to take the job, after enduring surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer last year, until his doctors gave him a clean bill of health. While Snow begins each day with a 6:30 a.m. staff meeting, he says he has managed to take most weekends off and visit a family retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

But any spokesman's schedule remains unpredictable. After news broke Sunday night that North Korea had tested a nuclear bomb, Snow held a 1:30 a.m. conference call with White House pool reporters to field questions on the incident.

Having held jobs ranging from Washington Times editorial page editor to Fox weekend host to syndicated radio talker, Snow understands the rhythms of journalism. Having worked as a White House speechwriter for Bush's father, he knew something about the machinery of government. But he felt that the press secretary's post offered the possibility of far more influence than he had wielded as either a mid-level staffer or a talking head.

Snow's celebrity has produced a stack of invitations to appear at GOP fundraisers. No other press secretary has helped his or her party raise money, a tradition grounded in the notion that the person who is the public face of an administration should not moonlight as a partisan operative. But Snow, after getting a green light from White House lawyers, has been hitting the road to raise cash.

"I'm not going out and calling out Democrats by name," Snow says. "These aren't red-meat speeches. I'm staying out of the bare-knuckle stuff. If it ends up compromising my ability to be press secretary, we'll stop doing it. If I was pounding on the podium and calling [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid nasty names, that would be a problem."

Joe Lockhart, a press secretary in the Clinton White House, says he has no ethical objection to Snow raising money for the Republicans, but that it "makes the job harder" by distracting Snow from his main responsibilities.

As for Snow bringing entertainment values to the briefing room, Lockhart says: "That may sound trivial, but it's not. It's hard to get your message out to reporters who aren't coming to your briefing."