Remembering Tony Snow

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: At the Newseum in Washington, a memorial in honor of Tony Snow, former White House press secretary, the founding anchor of "Fox News Sunday," and a dear friend and colleague to all of us at Fox News, who died of colon cancer early Saturday morning at the age of 53.

And hello again from Fox News in Washington, where Tony is being remembered by current and former presidents, by congressional leaders and also by millions of people around the nation who followed his remarkable career and his courageous battle with cancer.

During the next hour, we'll celebrate Tony's life with Vice President Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, members of the White House press corps and, of course, our Fox News Sunday panel.
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: At the Newseum in Washington, a memorial in honor of Tony Snow, former White House press secretary, the founding anchor of "Fox News Sunday," and a dear friend and colleague to all of us at Fox News, who died of colon cancer early Saturday morning at the age of 53.

And hello again from Fox News in Washington, where Tony is being remembered by current and former presidents, by congressional leaders and also by millions of people around the nation who followed his remarkable career and his courageous battle with cancer.

During the next hour, we'll celebrate Tony's life with Vice President Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, members of the White House press corps and, of course, our Fox News Sunday panel.

Tony began his career in newspapers where he worked in North Carolina, Detroit and Washington. In the late '80s, he first appeared on Fox Television in a show called "Off the Record" with Democratic strategist Bob Beckel.

Tony worked in the White House the first time as director of speech writing for president George H.W. Bush. And in 1996, he launched this program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Hi, I'm Tony Snow, and welcome to the beginning of something new.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Tony's work at Fox News included hosting other weekend shows and his own program on Fox News Radio. In April of 2006, he was named White House press secretary.

Late Saturday we sat down with Vice President Cheney at his home to discuss tony's passing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, thank you so much for talking with us. How important was Tony Snow's voice over the past two decades in the conservative movement?

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, he was a major player in the conservative movement. And the way I think of Tony is he's unique in terms of the extent to which he knew the news side of the business, then as a commentator, but also somebody who worked as part of the White House staff as a speech writer and, of course, as press secretary.

And there are very, very few people that have had as much experience on both sides of the divide, if you will. And I don't know anybody who had as much experience on both sides.

You think of people like Rush Limbaugh, obviously, who are giants in the profession, but always on the commentary side. And there aren't many who have done what Tony did.

WALLACE: How would you describe his brand of conservatism? What kinds of issues animated him?

CHENEY: Well, I, frankly, agreed with him on nearly everything, and I'm generally viewed as pretty conservative.

I'm not sure that that's saying something nice about Tony in some circles, but I always thought of him as a guy who understood very well the purposes of government, and that they were limited, and that there were some things government shouldn't do, that we are best able to do for ourselves.

And I thought Tony was an effective articulator of that. He was a tough critic of the Bush administration before he came on board as press secretary. Obviously, he had written some tough criticism of us.

WALLACE: I wanted to ask you about that, because when he was asked to be press secretary, people noted that just before that he'd written some tough things about the president, about your administration, that you were maybe getting a little soft around the edges, particularly on domestic policy.

Once he got inside the White House and was in policy meetings, would he speak up for conservative principles and say, "You've got to keep the faith?"

CHENEY: Well, it wasn't so much that. He saw his job, I suppose, in some respects the way I saw mine. I didn't always agree with the president, but my job was to present my point of view when asked and then support whatever the decision was.

And Tony clearly operated very much on the basis that he was out there to represent the president of the United States. He worked for the president. It wasn't a matter for him, given the role he played, of trying to impose his views or to shape policy by virtue of the position he occupied.

He had a different role as the spokesman, press spokesman, than, say, the guy running the economic shop or the policy shop -- very different responsibilities.

WALLACE: Let's talk about his role as spokesman. I think it's fair to say that when he took over as press secretary in 2006 that the White House in general, and the press shop, press operation, in particular, was back on its heels, was playing defense.

How effective was Tony in turning that around and being a forceful advocate on behalf of the president?

CHENEY: Well, he was superb, Chris, because I've known or worked with a lot of press secretaries, White House press secretaries, in my 40 years in Washington. And I'd have to say that Tony's the best.

He had this rare combination of intelligence, of commitment and loyalty to the president that he was working for, but also this great love of going out behind that podium and doing battle with what, in effect, were his former colleagues.

And it was this capacity that he had to be unfailingly polite, to maintain good humor under the most trying of circumstances, and do it, I thought, better and more effectively than anybody I've ever seen in that post.

WALLACE: By 2007, he became the first press secretary to actually go out and help raise money for Republican candidates. How big a star did he become inside the party?

CHENEY: Oh, he was a big star. I mean, you know, our paths would occasionally cross out there, because that's what vice presidents do, is a lot of fundraisers.

But Tony had depth of commitment and understanding, and he was a real media star. And I've never before seen a guy who was as good as he was at going out on the really tough issues when you've got, you know, the crew in the White House press office -- not the staff, but the press -- actively and aggressively going after the president or me or somebody else, and Tony would stand up there and give as good as he got.

And he always did it with great good humor. He was unfailingly polite. Everybody loved him. And he always had the feeling at the end of his briefings -- I used to watch him on the closed circuit video in the White House because it was such a performance. He'd always leave and everybody felt good about what they've just been through, whether they were newsmen or on the White House side of the...

WALLACE: Which is not always the way it is in the White House press briefing room.

CHENEY: I've been there often enough over the years when people dreaded having to go out in front of the press and answer questions, do the daily brief, when Tony absolutely relished it. He would never miss the opportunity to go out and engage with the journalists.

WALLACE: When he became such a star, did you ever think to yourself that if finances and health had not intervened that he might have been an effective Republican politician?

CHENEY: Oh, I think he could have been a great candidate if he'd wanted to do that.

I can remember talking with him when he decided he had to leave again. He came by to see me and tell me what he was going to do, and he felt a great commitment, obviously, to his family, and he was concerned at that point by virtue of his health situation that he really felt he had to go focus specifically on the family, and then everybody understood that. If it hadn't been for the tragedy of cancer, I think Tony had an unlimited future ahead of him.

WALLACE: Let's talk about the fight against cancer. What kind of a message do you think he sent and what kind of public service do you think he provided through his courage, through his good humor and by how openly he shared his fight with cancer?

CHENEY: Well, I thought it rendered a significant service. The thing that always struck me about him -- we didn't talk about it very much. I just remember a couple of occasions when it came up.

He was unfailingly optimistic and positive in his outlook. He knew, obviously, that this was a situation that might well shorten his life, but he never lost his lust for living every day to the fullest extent. He never let it get him down.

I never saw -- when I was around him, I never saw Tony down or depressed like I think a lot of us might have been if we'd encountered the kind of health problems he did. You know, he was -- relished every moment of every day. And that's the way he conducted himself right to the end.

WALLACE: I know that you and he were more than politician and reporter, or even when you were working within an administration, I know you were good friends. What are your personal thoughts about Tony and about his passing?

CHENEY: Well, it's a great tragedy, obviously, and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family. He'll be missed.

But I always remember the night he came to a dinner party at our house, and the house had burned down that day. They just had a significant house fire. And with Tony, you know, he would tell you that happened, but it absolutely didn't affect his enjoyment of the evening or his outlook on life.

A lot of us would, you know, really be bummed out if we just had a major house fire, and he had this capacity to sort of put everything in its place, maintain his perspective, and I think he'd want us to do that now.

I think he lived his life to the fullest. He needs to be, I think, deeply revered for that.

WALLACE: And I don't know whether the two of you ever talked about this, but as a colleague of his myself, his faith was a very tangible, real part of his life. It wasn't, you know, once a week on Sundays. It was something that really guided his life, wasn't it?

CHENEY: I think that's true. I think it helped him very much as he went through these last days in terms of wrestling with what, in effect, befell on him, having to battle cancer.

WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, we want to thank you so much for talking with us today and sharing your thoughts about Tony Snow. CHENEY: Well, it's a privilege to be asked, Chris. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: Joining us on the phone, Rush Limbaugh, who gave Tony a big early break in his career.

Rush, I know the first time you met Tony you were working together with him on a local talk show here in Washington. And pretty quickly you made him one of your regular guest hosts on your radio show. What did you see?

RUSH LIMBAUGH, TALK SHOW HOST: Passion. Passion. Passion, and he was informed. He was earnest, Chris. He was working at the Washington Times when we met on Beckel's show down there. It was quite a guest list. It was Jane Mayer, P.J. O'Rourke, Beckel, Tony and me.

And he was just earnest, and he had -- he wanted to expand his media horizons, not because he wanted face time on television or to be heard on radio. He just wanted to expand his horizons because he cared deeply, was passionate about what he believed and loved his country and wanted to affect it in the broadest possible way.

WALLACE: Rush, what do you think was Tony's role? How important was he in the conservative movement over the last two decades?

LIMBAUGH: Well, that's hard to quantify because it's so much. I'll give you one example of this. I was watching one of his press briefings, and he would unfailingly challenge the premise of many of the questions. I'd never seen this before in a press secretary.

He challenged the premise and told them that they were wrong in the narrative or the storyline that they were tacking, and this caused the president's supporters, those who had seen it, to stand up and cheer, because as you just discussed with the vice president, they had an out-of- the-way shop going on before Tony joined.

And the supporters of the president were desperate for this administration to defend itself against some of the attacks that were thought to be scurrilous, and there's Tony doing it.

And I thought -- you know, the A.P. had a story yesterday that -- I think the reason that they wrote what they did, which is offensive as it can be to me, is because he challenged them. It was A.P. David -- or Douglas Daniel (ph) who wrote that Tony, with a quick-from-the- lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and relentlessly bright outlook -- and what's wrong with a relentlessly bright outlook, by the way?

Then they write, "if not always in command of the facts." Now, why in the world say something like that on this occasion when it isn't the case in the first place?

I think it's because he did take a new tack as press secretary, and I'm telling you, he had a lot to do with keeping the president's approval numbers as high as they were. WALLACE: Rush, we've got about 30 seconds left. What stands out for you about Tony Snow, the man? Is there some event or some exchange that you keep coming back to over these hours since his passing?

LIMBAUGH: It was his consistent genuineness, Chris, no matter where you saw him -- the vice president was just talking about this in his own words. No matter where you saw him, no matter what the event, Tony Snow was Tony Snow. What you expected from Tony is what you got.

He had a joyful way of looking at the world. He believed in America. He believed in himself and his family. He believed in God. Those were the traditions and institutions he supported, and nobody did it better.

WALLACE: You know, I think you're exactly right. I mean, the word that keeps coming back to me is he was a happy warrior.

Rush Limbaugh, thank you so much for coming on and talking about Tony. We sure lost a good one here.

LIMBAUGH: Thank you, Chris. It's my pleasure to be with you, finally.

WALLACE: Up next, we'll talk with members of the White House press corps about Tony's days sparring with them as the president's press secretary. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ED HENRY: Are you saying that you from this podium know more than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

SNOW: I am telling you that -- I'm telling you what the intelligence indicates.

HENRY: I'm just trying to understand why there's a contradiction with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs...

SNOW: Ed, calm down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was Tony Snow giving as good as he got during his 17 months as White House press secretary.

And we're joined now by some of the lions in the press room during Tony's time there -- Bret Baier of Fox News, Martha Raddatz of ABC News, and Mike Allen of Politico.com.

Well, you heard Vice President Cheney call Tony the most effective, best press secretary he ever saw during his 40 years in Washington.

Bret, when Tony stepped behind the podium in 2006, how dramatically did he change the tone in the room, which -- I think everybody agrees they were catching a lot of incoming at that point?

BAIER: Yes, it was dramatic, because the president needed a strong advocate at that point. If you remember, the Iraq war -- there was some bad news almost every day out of Iraq.

There was a lot of questions about which way forward was going to happen on the ground, plus you had the immigration issue which -- the White House was taking attacks from all sides, and Republicans in particular.

So the president needed a forceful advocate at that point. And as you heard the vice president say, Tony was a happy warrior. He loved the combat, the back and forth, but it was never personal. I mean, he just -- his press briefings were, on average, 50 minutes to an hour, which is a lot longer than most. He liked it. WALLACE: Let's talk about, Martha, his arsenal of weapons as a press secretary. And one of them, it seems to me, has got to be the fact that he was better on T.V. than any of us were.

RADDATZ: That's exactly right. He was Mr. Smooth on television, which was also just very smart. And Bret's exactly right. The tone in the room just changed when Tony Snow came in. We loved it more, too. I mean, it was a great 50 minutes to sit there and battle it out with Tony.

But you knew he really loved it, and he was very good on T.V. -- very, very good on T.V., and effective, and I think all of us in television especially felt that right away. It's like, "Uh-oh, he's as good as you get."

WALLACE: Mike, I want to talk about this question, because we talk about the fact that it wasn't as nasty, not as contentious, and yet he wasn't a softball. He wasn't a cream puff. He was arguing the president's case, in fact, more forcefully than perhaps it had ever been argued from that podium.

So how was he able to be so forceful in his argument without it turning ugly?

ALLEN: Well, Chris, that's absolutely right. Rush was referring to the fact that people cheered for him, because there had been nobody manning the barricades for this president in a way that almost any president does it.

So he came in, and he didn't do it with a wink. He came in with conviction. But he did it in a way -- the sort of sunny conservatism that kept a larger audience. You know, yesterday the liberal bloggers were referring to him as a mensch.

And I can't think of any other conservative of Tony Snow's stature who would get that. They were remembering the tribute he paid on the air to Senator Wellstone when he died, when Elizabeth Edwards got cancer -- very moving remarks.

Lenny Davis, one of the most ferocious of the Clintonites, told me that way back in 1999, when he had a colon operation, Tony, who he knew vaguely from "Fox News Sunday," was one of the first people to call him.

RADDATZ: Tony was very thoughtful. I had that, too. It wasn't like Tony was on message all the time. He was very thoughtful. You could engage with him. You could do those back and forths and not ever have it get ugly. You could have something happen in there, and you'd walk out, and he was always very cordial.

I remember one instance where we were going back and forth on strategy and tactics in the Iraq war. And finally, you know -- there was no stopping point, and finally Tony just dropped his head on the microphone. And that breaks the mood. I mean, he had a great way of just breaking the mood in there and changing it.

WALLACE: But let me ask you, though, Bret, could he get tough when need be? I mean, let's face it.

BAIER: Oh, yes.

WALLACE: And I say this as a denizen of the White House press room for six years myself -- we go over the line at some point. Could he put reporters in their place?

BAIER: Oh, sure. You just saw the back and forth with Ed Henry there. But there were many instances where it got tough from the podium.

Tony did concede, however, that he was not great at boning up at the thick briefing books, you know, pre-White House briefing. He knew that he didn't, you know, study all the time, and sometimes deputy press secretaries would come back around and refine the statement from the podium.

But he was engaged at all times in that briefing room, and he was really, off the cuff, one of the best at it.

WALLACE: I want to ask you about that, Martha, because he gave a great quote which has been widely circulated since his passing. Tony once called that job, "the most exciting intellectually aerobic job I'm ever going to have."

I mean, he did love the engagement. He did love to argue ideas and to hear what you say and then respond to it.

RADDATZ: He did. And you know, I certainly got into it a lot with him on the Iraq war, and he loved that. And he was challenged by that and you knew he was. And the better your questions, the more excited he got about it.

And he also -- I keep talking about him walking out of there. I remember once after some story I did getting a call from Dan Bartlett, who was angry about something...

WALLACE: Who was the White House communications director.

RADDATZ: ... and, "You said this, you said this, you said this." And you know, I talked to Tony afterwards. He said, "You just tell Bartlett to lighten up."

So Tony really never -- I don't remember ever getting a call from Tony saying, "Why did you say that," or, "You should have said that."

WALLACE: Mike, I want to talk about Tony Snow the man. Ten months into his time as press secretary, the cancer recurs, and I remember when he came back, he got an ovation from the reporters in the press corps after weeks of treatment.

It really did seem as if even in this hard-bitten adversarial atmosphere of the press room that some of the walls came down.

ALLEN: No, that's unquestionably true, and it was partly because he talked about it so candidly. And this was a cruel disease. In front of our faces, we could see his hair thinning, his frame thinning, and yet he talked about the fact that optimism can be part of the cure. He talked about how blessed he was to live at a time when there was the hope of a cure.

And even in the last few months when people close to Tony -- it was a very, very difficult time. He'd stopped his speaking engagements. And in late spring, the president called him -- I know the president didn't betray this, but he knew that it was probably to say good bye. And yet Tony, talking to someone, says, "Well, this is a little bump in the road."

BAIER: Yes. You know, and he on this battle knew it was a life and death battle with cancer. But I talked to him, and he said, "Listen, Bret, I want to focus on the living part of that." And he did. He really did, every day, especially with his family.

WALLACE: I'm curious, because you obviously were a former colleague. Did he go out of his way to favor you in the press room, Bret, or do you think he went out of his way not to favor you?

BAIER: No. In fact, it was really balanced. I promise you. I was not...

RADDATZ: We were all watching that.

BAIER: You were. You would keep me in check if it wasn't.

I thought he was very balanced on that. We were friends. And so it was an interesting dynamic there. But he did that with everybody. I think he was very caring.

WALLACE: Martha, we've heard personal reflections from the vice president and Rush Limbaugh. Tell me something we haven't heard so far. What stands out for you about Tony Snow?

RADDATZ: Well, I know we've heard all of these stories about his humanity, but he was also really funny. You know? I mean, he wasn't just -- he wasn't just ha-ha funny. He was so humane to all of us about everything in our lives.

He would go in -- the very first day that he took us all in his office -- and he had this great idea of, "Oh, let's have these little press briefings in the morning in my office."

Well, you know, there are a bazillion of us. It's not like the old days. And no one could hear. And everybody's screaming at him. And Tony just sits there and says, "Oh, that was a bad idea." I mean, he was, "This is not going to work."

But he was one of the few people who I've met who just never looked at himself and thought, "Oh, I should have done that differently. I should have done that differently." He was always, "I did what I did. I'll learn from it. I'll go on."

He was just very humane and very easy to be around in ways that other people aren't. And I'm not doing a very great job of describing it, but I think you get what I mean.

WALLACE: No, absolutely.

BAIER: Let me just tell one quick story. Tony, when we started -- he started two weeks before I got over to the White House. My son was born with a series of congenital heart defects, had to have two open-heart surgeries. He's doing great now.

But the first surgery, which was one year ago yesterday, was pretty touch and go. I mean, it was very uncertain. Tony e-mailed almost every day, all the time, to check up -- before the surgery, after the surgery, even just one-liners about -- you know, inspirational comments.

And then when I came back to the first briefing after that, he welcomed me back and he said, "Nothing is more stressful than a parent having to see a child suffer." And this is from a guy at the time who was going through chemo, in probably one of the most stressful jobs there is, so he was...

RADDATZ: He always had a way of knowing that your situation was harder. You know, "You're a parent, and how hard that must be." He never thought of his own disease. And he made it easy for us to talk about that.

I know my colleague Robin Roberts, who's going through breast cancer - - that he made it easy for her. She felt better about her life. And that's one of the things he did.

WALLACE: You know, we have countless stories from members of the crew here who talk about him calling them when they were sick or somebody was sick.

Mike Allen, a final thought?

ALLEN: Yes. One of my favorite clips of Tony that's playing on your air is when he talks about no matter how big you are, if you think you've made it, you're nuts. And you can remember him saying that word.

When we went on the road with him, you know, a rock star in the red states, there were times more people wanted Tony's autograph than wanted the president's. And yet he took it in stride and had what seemed corny but in truth was very genuine appreciation for the place.

When I walk by the White House at night, I stop and look and appreciate it, and it's because of Tony talking about how amazing it was to be in the Oval Office with the president, just the two of them.

WALLACE: Mike, Martha, Bret, thank you all so much for coming in and talking about Tony.

ALLEN: He was an amazing man.

WALLACE: After the break, we'll take a look back at the years Tony spent here at Fox News -- some good stories from our Sunday panel when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Right now, Medicare is controlled by 132,000...

SNOW: So let them buy insurance themselves.

BUSH: Yes. My answer is too long.

SNOW: Yes.

BUSH: I'm sorry.

SNOW: I'm cutting to the chase here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was Tony giving then Governor George Bush a bit of a hard time just before the New Hampshire primary during the 2000 campaign.

Tony spent 10 years here at Fox News, and we like to think his biggest success was as the founding anchor of this program. We profiled him as our Power Player of the Week just as he was getting ready to leave for the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: There's enough of a ham in me that thinks, "You know, it wouldn't be so bad to be up on the podium."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: We talked with Tony Snow before he decided whether to take the job of White House press secretary. But he was clearly interested.

SNOW: There are some real challenges out there. So the idea of being in a White House when important decisions are being made and also trying to communicate what a president is going to do to respond to those is important.

WALLACE: Our focus, though, wasn't on Tony's new job but his old one...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Good morning. I'm Tony Snow, and...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: ... the first host of "Fox News Sunday." At the start, Tony broadcast from historic homes around Washington, for a good reason.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: There wasn't a Fox News. There wasn't a studio. There wasn't bupkis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Over the years, Tony built the show around a central vision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Explain America to Washington and Washington to America. That's kind of what you do. It's nice to humanize the figures who are right at the center of American politics, and at the same time, I think it's important to be the advocate for the people listening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Over the seven-plus years, is there one show, one Sunday, that stands out?

SNOW: Right after September 11th.

WALLACE: You choked up at the end.

SNOW: Yes, of course I did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: A solitary candle, a flag, a tear -- these are the tokens of our renewal. For a moment there, we got a glimpse at what we could lose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: At the end, I get choked up by saying we're not going to lose. And I get choked up even thinking about it now.

WALLACE: I asked him about the media world of endless news cycles he's stepping into.

SNOW: It's a wild, wild west out there. It's very exciting. I don't know if it's good or bad, but we're there whether we like it or not. I've got to tell you, Chris, I feel last year was the best year of my life. I got the love and support of a lot of people, and it's almost like September 11th.

You get a glimpse of the things you might lose and you get a glimpse of the things you love, and you start counting your blessings. And there's nothing like it. I wouldn't change it for the world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: Ooh, boy. What a loss.

We're joined now by our Sunday panel -- Brit Hume, Washington managing editor of Fox News, Nina Easton from Fortune Magazine, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, and Juan Williams of National Public Radio.

Brit, Tony came to Fox News even before you did. How important was he in the building of this news division?

HUME: Tony Snow was the face of Fox News before there was a Fox News and certainly before there was a Fox News Channel.

The Sunday show started before the channel did by a number of months, and he was up on the air, as you pointed out, from those various different locations where they taped the show from. I was still working elsewhere at the time.

And I remember when I came over here, the first week I was on this program -- I'd been at ABC News. ABC News was dominant in network news in those days, and people thought I was crazy that I was leaving the Yankees to join an expansion team.

Tony says to me -- when he was introducing me, he said, "Well, thanks for moving up," he said.

WALLACE: He got it before you did.

HUME: You know, that was Tony. You know, he was a fearless, cheerful, funny, smart.

WALLACE: Let's run a couple of clips that we have of Tony being fair and balanced as an interviewer, as the host of "Fox News Sunday." Here they are.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Suppose you're president -- and I've asked this to a lot of Democratic candidates, and I keep getting a run-around. They simply say that they'd be more persuasive. What do you do to get the Europeans on board?

JOE LIEBERMAN: Well, the first thing you do, without going too far back, is that you wouldn't follow the one-sided foreign policy that the Bush administration has followed before we got to the conflict in Iraq. (END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Does this mean that as of now, the United States has no physical or documentary evidence that Saddam is producing weapons of mass destruction?

DONALD RUMSFELD: No. What it means is that the inspections are designed to allow a cooperative country to show what they have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Juan, you appeared early with Tony on "Fox News Sunday." What was his strength as an interviewer and just as a presence on this program?

WILLIAMS: Well, you know, it was interesting. He was a different kind of Sunday interviewer, because Tony was not a "gotcha" guy. Tony, as you just heard, said that he wanted to be an advocate for the audience and introduce Washingtonians, Washington official power players, to America.

So he would ask circular questions. He would go on at times. As a fellow journalist, sometimes I'd be frustrated. But you have to understand, Tony -- you know, he went to Davidson. We were both philosophy majors. And you understood that he was engaging in a debate. For him, it was sitting at the dinner table.

We mentioned earlier he was going around Washington to these different places to start "Fox News Sunday." So he calls me up and he says, "Let's have an argument, come on over," to the stone house in a garden in Georgetown.

And we're sitting around, and it's just like you're sitting around a table with a bunch of friends, and you're having this long, extended and not clearly pointed debate. But that was Tony Snow, and that was his professional style.

The thing about it is, Chris, that it invited people in. I think sometimes he would get criticism from professionals in Washington, but people outside of Washington came to like Tony Snow.

They came to say, "Hey, I identify with him and his kind of curly thinking, and his friendliness, and his willingness to engage and be a conservative," a conservative who was, I might add to you, a guy who spent time, you know, in Kenya working with people, in the back woods, a guy who then went on to work with disabled kids in North Carolina.

His dad had -- you know, his mom had died of cancer, and for Tony, the idea of working and reaching out to people as part of his political life -- I mean, that's what made life for him so valuable and why he was such a great friend.

WALLACE: Nina, what are your thoughts about Tony and his strength as a broadcaster, as a communicator? EASTON: He was authentic. I mean, that's what -- we all, you know, talk about the kindness, the optimism, being upbeat. It was all -- there was an authenticity to him that worked to his favor both as a broadcaster and at the White House.

And I remember watching him chew over this question of whether he should go to the White House. Sitting in the makeup room, he would chew it over with people.

And you look at it. This was a guy who was going -- who was already fighting cancer, going into the White House, where the pressure is enormous, and yet you have a wife who's worried about you, you've got children who are worried about you, you've got these health concerns, in addition to the pressure of a very hostile press at the time.

Keep in mind at the time it was -- Scott McClellan was the press secretary, kind of a prickly character. And it was an unhappy situation over there. But you know, he walked into that. And as Dana Perino, the White House spokesperson, said to me, you know, I never saw him in a foul mood.

And I think both, you know, in front of the camera and behind the camera, that was real.

WALLACE: Bill, no question about it, Tony was an openly conservative journalist. How did he balance both parts of that?

KRISTOL: Well, he'd been an editorial writer for several papers. That's when I first met him 20 years ago, when he was with the Detroit News. He was a very good writer.

You know, we think of Tony as a T.V. anchor, but he was also a very good writer. He did a lot of reporting for some of his editorials and columns in the old days for the Detroit News and then at the Washington Times.

He came into the White House. And I remember I was there working for Dan Quayle as the chief of staff, and Tony came in as the president's speech writer. It was not the happiest White House in '91-92, and we did our best as the ship went down and, you know, commiserated occasionally at the White House mess about the fact that our good advice was not being taken.

But as Nina says, Tony was cheerful, a cheerful warrior, even when his cause was not prevailing and, of course, especially in the last three years, the degree of -- I mean, I always liked and respected Tony. But in the last three years, I really came to admire him because of his incredible serenity and courage in fighting the battle.

WALLACE: I want to pick up on something that Juan said, Brit, and that was that one of the things that struck me when I came to Fox was Tony's extraordinary connection to the audience.

I came when he decided he was going to be Rush Limbaugh. He was going to be a big radio star. And at first, I got some e-mails, somewhat doubting e-mails, from viewers about me trying to fill -- daring to fill his shoes.

And to this day, the biggest compliment I get is occasionally I'll get an e-mail that says, "You're still not Tony Snow, but you're not bad." I mean, he did connect with viewers.

HUME: He absolutely did. And the reason for it, I think, was that Tony -- obviously, there was a lot of people that sympathized with his viewpoints. But even for those who didn't and I think for nearly everyone, Tony had this sense of overflowing good will. You could see it immediately in his face with that radiant smile.

You look at all these pictures we've been seeing on the air today and yesterday, and in nearly all of them Tony is smiling that huge incandescent smile.

People sensed the innate goodness in this man, the decency, the goodwill in him. That's what the reporters at the White House sensed. They could tell. They knew. And that is something that people respond to automatically and unmistakably and, I think, in Tony's case, almost universally.

WILLIAMS: You know, I was -- right after Tony got the White House job -- you know, I don't talk politics with my son. So I'm driving down the street with my son. He'd come home from school. And they had a news report on. And it was, you know, the White House, whatever, and then here came the voice of Tony Snow.

Now, Raffy (ph) and I had gone to the ball game with Tony a few times. He'd met him here at the bureau. But I didn't think there was any special connection. He says, "Wait a minute." He says, "That's Tony Snow." He said, "That's our Tony Snow?" I said -- I mean, you're listening to the White House press secretary. But I think for many people, they were listening to "our Tony Snow."

They felt like he was a friend, like he was someone they knew, someone they could engage with. And for an 18-, 19-year-old, to me that was so extraordinary. "That's our Tony Snow?" Amazing.

WALLACE: You know, I want to follow up on something you said, Bill, when you said he was a wonderful writer. At the end of the show, we're going to play some of his parting thoughts. They are gems. They are so beautifully written. He really could string words together, couldn't he?

KRISTOL: He could, and we'll see that at the end of the show. People should go read, if they can find it online, his commencement speech at Catholic University a year ago, which is a very moving reflection on life and advice to young people and on his faith, which was so central to him, really.

WALLACE: The faith was, Brit, a very important part of his life and I think a tremendously sustaining factor as he encountered all of these obstacles. HUME: You know, it had always been part of him, and in more recent years, even before he was stricken with cancer, Tony had made, I think, a deep turn toward faith.

There's a minister here in town that a bunch of us meet with, and Tony -- his name is Jerry Leachman, and he's a great guy, kind of a man's man, and played linebacker for Bear Bryant, and he was a perfect guy to deal with Tony. Tony was, you know, hungry for the message of Christ. Jerry helped to give it to him.

Tony was enormously sustained and strengthened by that throughout his ordeal, and I think, you know, the example that we see of him is a reflection of that, that unfailing good humor and courage and cheer with which he confronted circumstances that would bring almost anybody else down.

WALLACE: We need to take a quick break here. But when we come back, we'll have more on Tony Snow, the man. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: On this day in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy was nominated for the presidency at the Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles. Kennedy, of course, chose Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas to be his running mate.

Stay tuned for more from our panel.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ROGER AILES: We all loved him and, you know, I think today, you know, what everybody wants to say to Tony, I think, is, "Thank you for sharing your life with us." But if Tony were here today, he'd say, "No, no, thank you."

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was the founder and chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, remembering Tony Snow.

And we're back now with Brit, Nina, Bill and Juan.

You know, Brit, on many levels, you could say that Tony was dealt an awfully tough hand. He lost his mother to colon cancer when he was just 17 years old.

He was living -- I don't know that I'd say in fear, but he was watchful of that and had regular checkups for it and then, of course, got it, beat it, got it again, had a young, beautiful family, and yet I never heard him bemoan his fate.

I never heard him say, "Why me?" In fact, he seemed grateful for all the love and all the support he had.

HUME: You know, the death of someone so young is always -- seems so terribly unfair and, in Tony's case, really heartbreaking, because he was so vigilant to avoid getting this evil disease, and it got him anyway.

And I must say to you that his example of courage and cheer and positive spirit was really breathtaking. I mean, he never wavered from that, never for a moment. And it was really a powerful thing to see, because, you know, you see it in all his pictures.

Here's a guy with his hair almost gone. He's looking gaunt, and he's undergoing these terrible treatments, in the most challenging job you can imagine, as Nina mentioned earlier, and yet it never wavered. It was a shining example of grace under the most terrible pressure.

WALLACE: I never heard him complain once.

Did you, Nina? EASTON: And you know, you kept wondering where's the anger -- I mean, where's the anger both, again, going back to the White House, where he's being, you know, beaten up at the podium every day, and where's the anger on this. You never saw a trace of anger.

You just saw this lovely grace in front of everybody -- as we mentioned before, same thing behind the scenes. And I think he was so good at looking at people as humans first and, you know, their jobs second, and he maintained that throughout his battle with cancer as well.

WALLACE: Bill, talk about his family. I used to see -- they used to bring -- he used to bring these kids in, and one was more beautiful, more striking, all with this almost white blond hair. You know, they looked like Becky Thatcher and Huck Finn.

And they loved him, and he adored them, and they'd play around here, and he was terribly devoted to his kids and to his wife, Jill.

KRISTOL: Absolutely. And Nina mentioned his lack of anger, which I think is true. He really accepted his fate, and his faith, I think, was so important for that.

But if there was anger, it was that he would not -- that he wouldn't be there with his wife and for his kids as they continued to grow up. Maybe that wasn't quite anger, but a very deep regret, obviously. He really loved his family.

Dana Perino, who was Tony's deputy at the White House and succeeded him as press secretary, told me a story yesterday that Tony went off on a trip with the president, I think a long trip, foreign trip, on Air Force One.

And his office was a mess, Tony's office, as it was here at Fox, and his desk was littered with old briefing papers and newspapers -- it's another sign of his good character, incidentally, a very messy office, littered desk.

WALLACE: So we know what Bill Kristol's office looks like.

KRISTOL: Exactly. And so his assistants, staff, decided, "We'll just clean it up. We'll put things in piles. We'll clean it up for Tony." And they cleaned it up, and it was very nice for when he got back.

And he walked into the room and he said, "Where are the pictures?" Because in the mess on his desk he had pictures of Jill and his kids. And the staff, of course, hadn't thrown them away. They had just moved them to a shelf behind the desk so they wouldn't get in the way.

And Tony immediately found the pictures and put them back on his desk. I mean, he was really deeply devoted to Jill and to his kids.

WALLACE: Juan, beyond all of this -- and we've talked about a lot of extraordinary things. He was a man of letters. He was a man of music. We haven't even touched on the fact that he was a wonderful and ardent musician. He was a big sports fan. Roger Ailes yesterday called him a renaissance man. I don't think that's an exaggeration.

WILLIAMS: Well, let's not go too far. He was a Bengals fan.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: There are always lapses in judgment.

WILLIAMS: Well, what can you do, you know? But, yes, he loved the Bengals. I mean, he's a Cincinnati kid, from Kentucky, but really, I mean, identified with Cincinnati, was a grand marshal in parades in Cincinnati.

But you know, when I think of the passion of Tony, I think of music. And you know, he had the chance -- he went to rock and roll camps.

He would tell me about playing with Jethro Tull, playing the flute, you know -- just unbelievable stuff that for him I think suggests the passion for life, again, beyond what we do every day, you know, the hard- nosed political outlook that you would associate with someone who's become the White House press secretary, or beyond the range of someone who's just in terms of political ideology to be locked in and focused in that way.

I remember his telling me about meeting his wife, Jill, who was the secretary to the editorial page editor at the Detroit News.

And one of the things Tony would tell me is that in the whole romancing process, that, "You know what, she's not a journalist. She's not a journalist. She's not pretentious, doesn't think that she knows," you know, I mean, Tony was interested in her as a strong, smart, capable person. There was nothing about the politics of it. It was like this is a really good looking, interesting woman.

And I remember similarly when he was on the road, after he'd become the rock star that you heard Vice President Cheney talking about -- I remember one time, he says, "You know what? Now I'm a rock star." He says, "You should see who comes up and asks me for my autograph." I said, "Tony, well, cool. That's great."

But you know, for him, it was like a thrill that people were asking him to come speak. He had become somewhat larger than life, and for him, he was just having a great time. Unbelievable.

EASTON: We haven't touched on -- he also offered solidarity with other cancer patients, and his band would appear at charity events and so forth, and he was very generous about that.

And you know, when Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with cancer, you know, all partisan leanings dropped and he really came out and spoke beautifully about that.

WILLIAMS: Yes, without a doubt, and you know, again, Vice President Cheney spoke about the fire at his house in Virginia. And I remember again asking, "You know, so what are you guys having to do," et cetera, and he starts telling me jokes that he's telling the kids about the demons in the walls which were the bad electrical wiring.

And then shortly thereafter he gets the house in Maryland where, you know, it's like a place that they can go and just be by themselves and get away from Washington. I think that was his haven. That was Tony. You know, he wanted to be with the family. He wanted to be with Jill.

HUME: You know, Chris, in the last years, one of the things that Tony was trying to do, knowing that, you know, he might not last, was to try to store up as much savings as he could to leave for his family.

And you know, think of, on top of everything else, you know, first taking the job at the White House and then after that, he was on the lecture tour, scrambling as fast as he could to try to provide for his family, and it was one more example of the incomparable decency of this guy and of his enormous love for his family, that that was how he -- what he was trying to do there at the end, and all I can say is I hope he succeeded very well.

WILLIAMS: Yes, he was a loving guy. I remember once being at a convention with him out in Iowa. We went to a gym. We were playing basketball. Did you know he could run and dunk a basketball?

HUME: I did not. Tony was one of these -- he could do anything.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: Well, that's it. That's as good as it gets. I want to thank you all so much for your memories, and it just -- it gives just a sense, a little bit of a sense, of what a special guy this was.

Up next, as he did so beautifully as host of this program, we'll let Tony have the last word.

But first, we want to close this segment with perhaps the most moving image of Tony Snow. This was his final day in the White House, September 14th, 2007, as he left, not because of his cancer, he said, but because he wanted to make some money to provide for his family.

And just watch and listen to how the White House staff sent him off as he left the building he loved so much for the last time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: As we end this tribute, we know you join us in our thoughts and prayers for Tony's wife, Jill, and his beloved and beautiful children, who used to play here at Fox, Kendall, Robbie and Kristi.

During Tony's years as host of "Fox News Sunday," he closed each program with his parting thoughts. The topics ranged from the horror of 9/11 to the meaning of Father's Day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: In the testing times ahead, many of us will feel the need to beseech the almighty for help. But we also need to remember that responsibility for the end results, for good or ill, lies not with God but with us.

The United States had a spirit before it had a name, one of faith and freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of neighbors and friends. We are again today. We once were a nation of hardship-tested dreamers. We are again today. We once were a nation under God, and we are again today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: It's tempting at times like this to pack vast wisdom into a short homily, but that's been accomplished only by God on Mt. Sinai and Lincoln at Gettysburg, and I'm neither. So I'm going to stick with a few simple observations.

First, politics is a great and wonderful avocation, especially in its American incarnation, but it's also a very small slice of life. In Washington, a town where the urgent regularly overwhelms the important, we tend to forget this, but most of you at home do not.

In the same vein, if you can't laugh at politics, you either have a head or a heart of stone. This is the profession where high-minded ideals regularly encounter the exploding cigar of human nature.

What a delightful and achingly human business, filled at once with great ideals and belly-crawling acts of avarice, deceit and betrayal.

And finally, nothing matters more than loving those around you, including your friends.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: As the thunders of political combat roll into the distance, we can stop and savor the important things -- a child's laugh, a friend's warm wishes of good will, a lonely soul's cry for a bed and a meal.

You don't have to give a million bucks to change the universe. A smile and a kind gesture will do just fine. The best way to keep our hearts warm, our hopes alive and our lives whole is to share a little love.

Love is a powerful, irreplaceable thing, and days like Father's Day remind us what matters most. I don't care if I get any presence today. I get the best gift imaginable every evening when I walk through the door after work and three youngsters race my way calling out the name I cherish most, Daddy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)