Condolences to friends, family and colleagues of Tony Snow. I wonder if major television news people die in threes as well? Unlike Russert, this wasn’t as unexpected–he had been fighting the cancer for a long time, and his mother died of it. But I hadn’t been aware that he was near the end.

[Update in the evening]

Mark Steyn has a short tribute (not to imply that many others don’t, and I suspect that he’ll have a longer one in due time). This is a very interesting point politically:

He had a rare temperament in today’s politics, and the Administration might have been spared the vicissitudes of these last five years had he become press secretary earlier.

Yes, of the many failings of George W. Bush, one of them is loyalty to previous staff. Scott McClellan was completely out of his element as WH spokesman, yet he was allowed to blunder through during many of the worst years of the administration. Things might have gone much differently had Tony Snow been brought in earlier. He would have challenged much of the nonsense that the press was putting forward much earlier, without looking like a deer in the headlights. It just shows how important perception can be.

[Update a while later]

Here’s an encomium from Rick Moran.

It’s very hard to come up with anything negative about Tony Snow, though I’m sure that one or two of my regular commenters will make the attempt in the service of their vile political agendas. I hope that I’m wrong.