I’ve spent the day feeling gobsmacked by the news about the recurrence of Tony Snow’s cancer. I’ve known Tony for more than 20 years — was part of the team that recruited him to join the Washington Times as its editorial-page editor back in the mid-1980s when he had been working for the Detroit News as an editorial writer.

He was just 30, and he was a star in the making. What’s more, he knew he was a star in the making. I’ve never known anyone quite as confident about his own gifts or as confident about trying entirely new things and mastering them — television, radio, presidential speechwriting. But unlike other very confident people, Tony doesn’t have a trace of arrogance in him. What he has and has always had is an infectious, boyish enthusiasm and a superhuman cheeriness.

I have no doubt that his extraordinarily sunny disposition and sense of optimism gave him the werewithal to fight back so successfully against his cancer when it first manifested itself. And since disposition is a quality that is born and not made, it will be another weapon in his arsenal to help him fight this battle yet again.

But he shouldn’t have to. He shouldn’t.