Newly-appointed White House Press Secretary Tony Snow says he wants to help restore civility to American politics. In stepping into his new job, Snow criticized what he called the “vicious, personal and sometimes unfocused warfare between Democrats and Republicans, or the press corps and the political class.”

The American people deserve better, in his opinion: “People at home are saying to themselves: ‘This isn’t what I remember when I was looking at the civics book,’ people still have a more exalted view of what government ought to be.”

While there’s only so much a press secretary can to elevate the standards of American political discourse, I have no doubt that Mr. Snow will do his best.

When he was appointed to his present position, I recalled a speech he gave about ten years ago at one of the excellent Ragan speechwriter conferences. On that occasion, Snow talked amusingly and self-effacingly about his career as a speechwriter for the elder President George. He also said something about his approach to White House speechwriting that I never forgot.

He was talking about Rose Garden speeches.

One of the dullest parts of the White House speechwriter’s job is writing Rose Garden remarks.

Week after week, year after year, select groups of Americans from Main Street America – Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, clergy, representatives of civic, fraternal and professional groups, mothers concerned about this or that social problem, winners of national spelling bees, and so on – are herded into the Rose Garden to hear the President give them a ten-to-15 minute speech of welcome.

Imagine having to grind out all those speeches like sausages.

But Tony Snow said that he felt it was his duty to give those speeches his best effort. He put it this way: He said that many of those people had come hundreds of miles to stand in the Rose Garden. For most of them, it was the only time in their lives that they would visit the White House and see a President of the United States up close.

It was a special moment for them, and he said wanted to put something special and memorable in each of those speeches that they could take away with them.

Recalling that speech he gave a decade ago satisfied me that Tony Snow’s idealistic approach to politics is no snow job. I wish him well in his new post; the American people need and deserve a higher level of debate on public issues.