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Tony Snow knows what it's like to excite a White House staff with a communications idea, only to meet an immovable object: the president. It happened to him in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush was struggling to convince voters that he was as commanding on domestic policy as he was on the Persian Gulf War.

Snow was then a 36-year-old White House speechwriter courted for his brashness. He had been plucked in 1991 from The Washington Times editorial page as a newcomer who could bring some sizzle to what Bush's top aides diagnosed as the president's lackluster speeches. Then, as now, Snow's editorial barbs had gotten him noticed. He had described the president as "dull, soulless, technocratic"; "a model of feckless, center-less indecision"; and a "slave to symbolism."

Initially, Snow's speech craft earned kudos. And leading up to the 1992 State of the Union address -- which was supposed to reboot the president's election-year agenda -- Snow predicted that Bush's remarks would be "the biggest speech of the next five years." No such luck, and eventually Snow found himself moved to White House media affairs.

But in May of that year, Bush tried to reclaim lost opportunities by delivering a prime-time address in response to the Los Angeles riots sparked by the beating of Rodney King. While the president's communications director, David Demarest, drafted a speech in his West Wing office, Snow, working across the street, suggested that Bush could seize his audience and generate some headlines by echoing King's televised words -- "Can we all get along?"

Snow's approach -- to begin the speech with the compassion in King's plea -- got the nod from Bush's senior aides, and it was soon blended with Demarest's law-and-order draft. With three hours to spare before the speech, the president's chief of staff and communications adviser brought the text to the president, according to a Los Angeles Times profile of Bush published that fall. Bush took only moments to scan the speech before making it clear that Rodney King's rhetoric was not going to be his.

The president told Americans, "What we saw last night ... in Los Angeles is not about civil rights. It's not about the great cause of equality that all Americans must uphold. It's not a message of protest. It's been the brutality of a mob, pure and simple. And let me assure you: I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order."

After two years with Bush, Snow came to understand that the president preferred to be his own communications director. He didn't like poll-tested messages or handlers, and he did like the familiarity of prepared remarks that were pretty much the same as the ones from yesterday.

Fourteen years later, Snow, at age 50, has been offered a strikingly similar challenge -- this time by George W. Bush, and this time as White House press secretary. Beginning next month, the sizzle that Snow is supposed to bring to presidential communications will be televised from the press briefing room. Snow clearly believes that his ideas will be welcomed behind the scenes, where he hopes to nudge a president who makes no bones about trying to work around the national media.

The president -- with Snow and outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan by his side -- acknowledged on Wednesday that Snow "is not afraid to express his own opinions," a reference to occasional criticisms of Bush and his policies in Snow's columns and TV commentary (he was an editorial writer or editor at six newspapers, and made a splash in television and radio through the Fox News Network). Nevertheless, Bush made Snow's staff role clear: "My job is to make decisions, and his job is to help explain those decisions to the press corps and the American people."

In an impromptu exchange with reporters who bumped into him in the press work space about an hour after the announcement, Snow explained that he expects to become a presidential adviser -- perhaps beyond the realm of communications. "At this particular juncture, I think what you want is as much honest counsel as you can get," he said, according to a transcript prepared by Ken Herman of Cox Newspapers. "So when I agree, I'm going to agree, but when I disagree, I disagree.... They want people to express their opinions; you're not coming here to drink the Kool-Aid."

This approach may help Snow signal to Bush's entrenched team that he has Bush's ear on policy and that he brings his own national standing to the mix. But Bush already has a communications counselor, Dan Bartlett, and new Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten is reorganizing the policy team. So it remains to be seen whether an effective press secretary can also be an adviser-at-large.

Mike McCurry, President Clinton's press secretary, said in an e-mail exchange that his roles as presidential briefer and advocate for the media were "more than a full-time job." Advising on policy, he said, might have thwarted his primary utility to Clinton. "I think it's harder to brief well when your colleagues know you opposed the decision you are explaining," he said. "I wanted everyone to come to me to share information.... I did not want people to think I would be an opponent in decision-making."

A press secretary's utility depends on facts -- and truth. "The most important resource a press secretary has is his or her credibility," said Towson University political scientist Martha Joynt Kumar, who has written two books about White House communications. "And even if it is unintentional, if a press secretary provides reporters with false information, his usefulness is at an end."

Marlin Fitzwater, who was press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush (Snow consulted him more than a week ago), said in an interview that Snow's strengths as a spokesman and as an adviser to Bush might be "in the new school of being an advocate."

"What [White House officials] really need is a president who lets it be known that he wants them to be out there supporting his programs and that he'll be forgiving if they make mistakes," Fitzwater said. "If mistakes are not allowed, then you hunker down. Bush doesn't have very many people who are willing to speak out on his behalf, and I don't know why -- but it is fear of something."

Snow "will be proactive," Fitzwater predicted. "Or at least he will be until the first time he gets slapped down."

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