WASHINGTON – Tony Snow hasn’t even started his new job as White House press secretary and he’s already been called “a BushBot, a puppet, a force of evil in the modern world, a White House mouthpiece-toady-stenographer,” he said. And more.

But the good-natured columnist and Fox News commentator – named Wednesday as Bush’s new spokesman – can give as good as he gets. Although a strong supporter of President Bush, Snow has used his column to label the president “something of an embarrassment,” cast his domestic policy as “listless” and compare him to “the boy who can’t say no” when it comes to federal spending.

The 50-year-old conservative commentator has done an even tougher Snow job on Democrats.

He’s dismissed them as “reduced to a state of unshakable hysteria” and faulted their “righteous ignorance.” He’s labeled Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid “wheezy prophets of the Defeatocrat Party.”

He also has been a strong defender of Bush on many an occasion, applauding his “brilliant” foreign policy, his stick-to-his-guns persistence in Iraq, his “delicious disdain for the Beltway culture,” his “visionary” Social Security plan.

“On . national security and global destiny, he positively dwarfs the political opposition,” he has written of Bush.

To put it mildly, Snow does not come from the cautious culture of some press secretaries of the past – the ones who make an art form of saying as little as possible.

All of that gives Republicans hope that Snow’s fresh voice – and star quality as a polished media figure – will help reinvigorate the beleaguered White House and jolt it out of a defensive crouch.

“Tony’s sympathetic to the president, obviously, in terms of policy and philosophy, but he’s not a Bush insider and I think that could be healthy,” said William Kristol, who worked with Snow in the first Bush administration and appeared regularly on Snow’s Fox News show. He describes Snow as “a happy-go-lucky guy” with a relaxed attitude that could do the tightly wound Bush team good.

Snow wrote in a February column that over time, even the best presidential aides burn out “or worse, lose their capacity to tell the boss, ‘Sir, that idea stinks.”‘

Former White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, who worked with Snow in the first Bush administration, said the commentator “has a good personality for bringing together contentious people and contentious issues,” and the independent stature to help him prod the White House staff toward better press relations.

The new job will be intense, however, but Fitzwater said, “I always tell people, you may lose your health, your wealth and your family, but it’ll still be the greatest job you’ll ever have in your life.”