“Tony Snow Will Only Be Effective If…”

At the top of CNN’s Reliable Sources this morning, Howard Kurtz asked David Gergen about the prospect of Tony Snow as White House press secretary:

“Tony is very good,” Gergen said. “And he does have — he certainly has paid some dues in journalism, I’m not sure he would call himself a full-time journalist, but he’s worked hard over at Fox News to develop himself and I think he ought to be given credit for that. He also, of course, had the relationship with the Bush family. So he does seem to me, in many ways, a very good possibility for that.”

But Gergen said “the real question is whether the president wants to change the way information is given to the press. It’s all up to the president. Tony Snow will only be effective if the president himself wants to change the practices and how secretive they are, how non-informative they are.”