Enter Tony Snow: the president gets a new press secretary.

TONY SNOW knows when to dodge a question. Ask the new White House press secretary just what wasn't working in the West Wing, and why Josh Bolten, the new chief of staff, needed to overhaul the press operation, and Snow stays a mile away from controversy. "That one, for obvious reasons, I'm just gonna dodge," he says.

No one would really expect Snow, the popular radio host, Fox News anchor, and syndicated columnist, to spill any secrets about that. But the thing Snow understands is this: You can tell a reporter you're dodging his question and he might not like it, but he won't be mad. On the other hand, if you dodge the question while insisting that you are really answering it, he will be mad. And if you do that a lot, you've got a recipe for bad relations with the press. It's happened before.

The answer to the question that Snow didn't want to address is, of course, that the outgoing press secretary, Scott McClellan, was never a good fit as the president's spokesman. McClellan is by all accounts a good and decent man, and clearly loyal to George W. Bush, but he never had the sense of ease needed to handle intense questioning in the briefing room. Privately, he was easy to talk to, and as helpful as he could be inside a White House that didn't particularly like to deal with the press, but without that public manner, he sometimes appeared robotic as he repeated answers to questions--sometimes over and over and over.

Also, although McClellan never said it, one can read between the lines of some of his statements to see that he wasn't happy at being kept out of the loop on some important matters. For example, when Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter in Texas, McClellan didn't know about it until after the decisions on how to deal with the press had already been made. When reporters wanted to know if top White House aides Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had played any role in the disclosure of CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson's identity, McClellan gave reporters the answer he had been given: No. It later turned out that was wrong.

So there were really two problems in the spokesman's office. One, McClellan wasn't really right for the job, and two, he sometimes wasn't clued in on what was really going on. Add to that all the difficulties the Bush White House has experienced in the last year, and you've got the need for a new start.

That's where Tony Snow comes in. And it all happened by accident--sort of. Snow and Bolten knew each other from their days in the first Bush White House, when Snow was a speechwriter and Bolten was doing policy work. They didn't stay in touch through the Clinton years, but, not long ago, when Bolten was director of the Office of Management and Budget, Snow called him and said let's have lunch, let's catch up. Bolten agreed, but it took quite a while to find a time when both men would be free. The day they finally scheduled lunch in Bolten's OMB office turned out to be the day Bolten's appointment as chief of staff was announced. To anyone on the outside, it looked kind of, well, arranged, but Snow says it wasn't. "It was one of those incredible serendipity deals," he says.

When Snow's appointment was announced, it was met with pretty much universal praise, at least from Republicans. Even the way it was announced was an encouraging sign, as some in the GOP saw it.

In the past, the president had sprung some decisions on the public with no advance notice. This meant that, in instances such as the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination, the White House had no way to gauge public reaction ahead of time. But with Snow, word got out the old-fashioned way: It leaked out to the public, a little bit at a time, for several days. It was a traditional trial balloon, so uncharacteristic of a Bush appointment that some White House observers thought that Snow would never get the job. After all, anyone who talked about such things ahead of time, as Snow did, was sure to incur White House wrath, right? Wrong. In this case, the early reaction to Snow's appointment was good, and just got better as time went on. Snow was in.

The process left some Republicans smiling: Finally, the Bush White House has decided to make things a little easier on itself. But apparently there was no grand new plan. Word had just gotten out, leaving Snow himself feeling a little sheepish. "The first leak out of this White House and it's my name," he says.

Will Snow's appointment address the two problems that plagued McClellan? Well, Snow is certainly expected to be more deft and understanding in dealing with the press. He has been a reporter and knows what they need, even if he can't give it to them all the time. As far as being in the loop is concerned, Snow is said to have received assurances that he will be included in the policy-making process so that he can better explain it to the world. Although he won't confirm that himself, he did tell NATIONAL REVIEW, "The one thing I'm satisfied with is that I will have plenty of access and plenty of information so I can do my job right."

So what about the opposition? Democrats couldn't find much bad to say about the well-liked Snow. "The president's very lucky to have a man of Tony Snow's caliber take this job on," said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois. "I think he's going to do an excellent job at maybe one of the toughest press jobs in America."

The administration's critics slipped up a bit when the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank run by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, released a list of quotes from Snow's syndicated column in which Snow criticized the president--lots of times--from a conservative perspective. Among them were quotes in which Snow said Bush had "become something of an embarrassment" to Republicans running for office, that he had "lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc," that he "has a habit of singing from the Political Correctness hymnal," and that he "has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor--now!"

No doubt this move was intended to make Snow and the White House uncomfortable, and perhaps to provoke some embarrassing questions in the briefing room. But instead, it had the effect of insulating the White House from one of the Left's most consistent criticisms: that George W. Bush won't tolerate dissent and isn't interested in hearing from anyone who doesn't agree with him. Seeing the president hire an outsider--and a sometime critic--made that line of criticism look a little silly. In this way, Podesta's outfit ended up doing the White House a favor.

So now Snow actually has to do the job. Even with his experience, there's a pretty steep learning curve. Snow told NATIONAL REVIEW that he has sought advice from several former White House press secretaries, including Mike McCurry, Marlin Fitzwater, George Stephanopoulos, and Joe Lockhart. At this early stage, though, he's busy just trying "to master the basic skills of doing the daily brief--those are the things that are kind of consuming me right now."

And one last thing. Snow was quite open with the public when he was diagnosed with colon cancer last year. After surgery, he was declared cancer-free, and he checked with his doctor again before deciding to take the White House job. Still, people have worried that the high-stress position might harm his health. He's not worried. "I was working six days a week before," he explains, citing the demands of his radio show, TV appearances, and column. "I wouldn't do this if it in any way compromised my health."

So now Snow is the new face of the Bush White House. He'll undoubtedly have a honeymoon, and then, when the first big bad thing happens--or maybe when there's one of those tempests in a teapot that periodically consume the White House press corps--he'll be tested under fire. No one can say what will happen, but White House officials are looking for better days in the briefing room.