Legacy Matters

Tony Snow, R. I. P. Great Legacy

Coming back from the weekend, I was shocked to hear that Tony Snow had died.  Of course, I knew he had colon cancer, but death, especially sudden death, is always shocking.  He was a good and decent man who became great by force of his character.  He will be missed by many but no one will miss him more than his wife and three children.  To them, the deepest condolences. 

There are a score and many more personal recollections online about the force of his character.

Yuval Levin writes about his "deep and intensely cheerful curiosity."

Bill Kristol marvels at his calm courage and cheerful optimism
His deep Christian faith combined with his natural exuberance to give him an upbeat world view. Watching him, and so admiring his remarkable strength of character in the last phase of his life, I came to wonder: Could it be that a stance of faith-grounded optimism is in fact superior to one of worldly pessimism or sophisticated fatalism?

President Bush said
It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day,” the president said in a statement from Camp David, where he is spending the weekend. “He brought wit, grace and a great love of country to his work. His colleagues will cherish memories of his energetic personality and relentless good humor.”

Gaghdad Bob says
The essence of his soul comes through quite vividly -- his decency, his passion, his generosity, his desire to help lift mankind. ....

I don't know why there aren't more people who are able to convey the joy, excitement, creativity, expansiveness, optimism, hope, compassion, decency, humor, spirituality, and love that animate conservatism. Maybe they just don't get it the way Snow did, and connect all the dots, both horizontal and vertical.

Mark Steyn on his grace, affability and generous advice.

An NRO symposium  on Tony Snow, Happy Warrior

Susan Estrich says Tony Snow was a Gem
Tony had a sweetness about him, a sweetness that, in the mean world that Washington and the media can be, sometimes led him to believe that everyone operated from the same place he did...

He was so earnest, so dear, he liked everyone and assumed the same about everyone else; he was honorable and honest, and assumed it about others.

Kurtz wrote an appreciation of Snow called As Good as His Words.

Here's a David Gregory interview with Snow talking about living and working with cancer.  Kathryn Jean Lopez says it's impossible not to cry to hear Snow talk about his family and the 'depth of happiness' that cancer made possible in his life.

New York Times obituary
Mr. Snow’s death was announced by the White House. When a recurrence of the cancer interrupted his tenure there, he chose to talk about it openly, saying he wanted to offer hope to other patients. His message to them, he said, was: “Don’t think about dying. Think about living.”
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His snappy sound bites made Mr. Snow an instant hit among Republicans. “It’s like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,” Karl Rove, the president’s former political strategist, once said.
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He also had a musical flair; he grew up playing the flute, taught himself the acoustic guitar and played in an amateur rock ’n’ roll band, Beats Workin’. When they performed at the White House Congressional picnic, Mr. Bush jokingly called them “a bunch of, well, mediocre musicians.”

Washington Post obituary
In his brief tenure as Bush's public advocate, Snow became perhaps the best-known face of the administration after the president, vice president and secretary of state. Parlaying skills honed during years at Fox News, he offered a daily televised defense of the embattled president that was robust and at times even combative while repairing strained relations with a press corps frustrated by years of rote talking points.
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ABC News correspondent Ann Compton, president of the White House Correspondents Association, said yesterday that Snow was "the first press secretary who chose to use the podium as a way to argue the president's case -- not just in the president's words, but in his own."

There is a new, disturbing and completely uncivil tendency for some to make partisan remarks, often quite vile, when a person dies.  Ben Johnson describes some of them in "Goebbels With Better Hair."   No one is above criticism, but people who make crude and hateful remarks about someone who has just died should be shunned says Howard Kurtz.  Amen to that.  Fortunately, they are a tiny minority, but shunned they should be.

Better than any words about him are his own and none are better than his commencement address last year to the graduates of Catholic University.  If you read nothing else, read his address, "Reason, Faith, Vocation."