Tony Snow Keeps Spirits Up Despite Cancer

On Thursday night White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was happily playing with his rock band, Beat's Working. He plays the flute and the guitar. Watching him have so much fun, it's hard to believe it was only three days earlier that he returned to his job after surgery for colon cancer.

"You never anticipate this stuff," he said in the White House Briefing Room. "It just happens. I want to thank everybody in this room."

"I mean the thing that has choked me up more than anything else is just this feeling of love," he told Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver in an interview. "You've got all these people who are reaching out and trying to help you."

For the 51-year-old and father of three, things are especially serious because this is his second bout with the disease. It also runs in the family; Snow's mother died from colon cancer when he was just 17.

"Obviously that was something that had a huge impact on me," Snow said. "I wish I'd talked more to my mom, so I've been very open with our kids as well, so that they're not running around with unnecessary fear. But on the other hand, they've got a sense of what's at stake."

What's at stake of course is Tony Snow's life. But he sure didn't act like it as he and Braver sat talking in the ornate Indian Treaty Room in the White House Complex. or as they walked around outside. He says he still gets a thrill when he is on the White House grounds.

"My favorite site is looking back at the North Portico because you've got the columns, you've got the sense of history," he said.

Snow is making a bit of White House history himself — a former anchor for Fox Television and Radio, he's the first cable network journalist to serve as Presidential Press Secretary.

"He's got a remarkable facility to talk, to spin, to explain, cajole, vamp," said CBS News Chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod. "He's got the chair and the whip that just keeps everybody at bay."

Axelrod says Snow is able to diffuse tension in the White House press room.

"It's remarkably toxic at times, isn't it?" he said. "I mean, it really is and that's the nature of the job."

So sometimes Snow uses humor to lighten things up. Take the day a reporter's cell phone went off during a briefing. It sounded like a rap song.

"Does Martha have a hip-hop ring tone?" he said. "Play that funky music, white girl!"

Snow went to Princeton High School in suburban Cincinnati and majored in Philosophy at Davidson College. Politics was always a passion, so he says it's no hardship for him to arrive at the White House at 6:30 each morning to start prepping for questions from reporters.

"When you're the press secretary, you can usually get your calls returned, but yeah, every once in a while you have to work it a little bit," Snow said. "You know there's gonna be people who say, 'Well, I'm not sure you should know that.'"

Snow said there is no formal process to deciding what information can de divulged.

"Now there may be times — especially on particular issues, national security or foreign policy — where you know we can only go this far," he said. "But on the other hand, there may also be times when somebody says, 'Well, we can't say this' and the response of the press office will be, 'Why?' If you stonewall over little things, it's gonna hurt your credibility and it doesn't serve any purpose."

But so far Snow said the president hasn't gotten mad at him, yet. In fact Snow, who worked as a speech writer for the first President Bush, was brought in as Press Secretary just a year ago to help improve this President Bush's image, but it hasn't quite worked out that way.

"As good as [Snow] is, and he's the best, still look at what the state of the Bush presidency is in terms of public opinion," Axelrod said.

But Snow, nicknamed "Snowbird" by the President," insists he doesn't worry about the polls. He says he's too busy just dealing with reporters.

"I have a feeling that you know they don't want to look like they're beating up on the sick guy, but on the other hand, they also wanna make sure that they're doing their jobs," he said.

And so this past week there have been some intense exchanges and some "Tony Snow" moments as he refused to pass judgment on whether the Iraqi Parliament has any business taking two months off this summer.

"Trying to draw broad conclusions about something that is rumored possibly to happen in two months is a great parlor exercise, but it is not a particularly useful diplomatic exercise," he said.

Then some reporters protested.

"Oh, I know everybody is talking abut it, sure, you all will talk about this," he said.

He smiled and leaned across the podium and says emphatically: "No!"

"I love this job," Snow said. "This job is more fun than any job I'm ever gonna have in my life. So the fact is I love dealing with reporters. I love working with the president and anybody will tell you, when you're trying to fight something like cancer, having good spirits, a good attitude, things you love, doing those make you better. I've got one of those jobs where I'm happy getting up in the morning, so I think it's good medicine, too."

Tony Snow started chemotherapy on Friday. He plans to be back at work at the White House office Monday.