A Great Loss

A few days ago, American political discourse suffered a great loss. It's hard to imagine watching the election returns this coming November without the analysis and commentary of Tim Russert to help us understand the emerging trends and make sense of it all.

How many of us remember his on air performance in the 2000 presidential election, when he used the back of a legal pad, and then the famous white dry-erase boards to analyze the best chances of the two candidates? As the networks' computer projections declared one state after another either blue for Vice President Al Gore or red for Governor G. W. Bush, as NBC itself awarded Florida to Gore, then reversed itself and called it too close to call, as Tim Russert clearly was enjoying himself sitting next to Tom Brokaw watching the madness unfold, we saw it all come down to the one state Tim had famously predicted would decide the election. He didn't say "I told you so," at least not in so many words, but you could tell he was enjoying himself when he held up the small white board bearing the legend, "Florida, Florida, Florida." (In 2004, Tim was right again. This time, it was "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.")

Many viewers became fans of Tim Russert that night in 2000, but the fact is, he had been hard at work for years, using a sharp mind and a prosecutorial zeal for truth and justice to help us make sense of the world of Americal politics. Tim first entered that world working in the 1976 Senatorial campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynahan. Moynahan was in some ways an unlikely choice, but he was the candidate Tim Russert believed had the qualities and held the values that New York, and America, needed.

Moynahan was a scholar who, by 1976, had already served in the administrations of four presidents in succession from John F. Kennedy to Gerald Ford. In today's highly polarized environment, it seems hard to believe, but prior to being appointed, by Richard Nixon, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Moynahan had been a member of the White House Staff during Nixon's first term, serving as Counselor to the President on urban affairs. The 1976 Senate race in New York was tumultuous, with Moynahan pitted against an array of iconic Democrats, including Bella Abzug and Ramsay Clark, as well as incumbent Conservative Party Senator James L. Buckley, but in the end, Moynahan was victorious, launching a four-term career in the United States Senate.

Tim Russert so distinguished himself during that successful campaign, that he emerged from a pack of seemingly better groomed staffers to become Moynahan's chief of staff in 1977. Sensing that Russert, a kid from working class roots in Buffalo might be intimidated by the Harvard/Yale crowd he would be supervising, Moynahan reportedly took Tim aside and told him, "What they know, you can learn. What you know, they can never learn."

What Tim Russert knew that Moynahan saw in him was how things should be done and that, no matter how tempting, it was never right to take the expedient route, when you knew that the hard way was the right way. Russert had learned this, as many have recalled this past weekend, partly from the nuns and Jesuits who had taught him in South Buffalo parochial schools, at Canisiuis High School and at John Carroll University. Even more, however, as Tim himself poignantly remembered in his bestselling book, Big Russ & Me, he got these values from his father, who had worked two full-time jobs, as a newspaper delivery driver and as a sanitation worker, to provide his children with a greater education and broader opportunities.

Tim Russert made the most of those opportunities. He left Moynahan's staff in 1983 to help Mario Cuomo win office as governor of New York. After a short stint on Cuomo's staff, he left politics for journalism in 1984, joining NBC News in an executive position. He became the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC News in 1988, a position he held until his death last week. In 1991, he stepped before the camera for the first time as host of Meet the Press. He went on to moderate the show for longer than anyone who had preceded him.

He also breathed new life into an institution, the Sunday morning political gabfest, that had become tired and moribund. Unlike many of today's political talk show hosts, whether on television or radio, Tim Russert was not cynical and cranky like Bill O'Reilly, nor was he a shallow shill for a particular political agenda, like Rush Limbaugh. Instead, he worked tirelessly to prepare for each interview, and used that preparation to come up with questions that were both fair and carefully designed to get at the truth. He did not ambush his guests or seek to embarass them, but he had no sympathy for a guest who came to Meet the Press without adequate preparation. To Tim's mind, this was a failure to keep faith with the American people. If you want to seek and hold high office or serve in important appointed positions, you should be ready to answer relevant questions, and do so truthfully.

Tim died in his office, preparing for upcoming interviews on Meet the Press. He had just returned from a vacation in Italy with his wife and his son, Luke. They were celebrating Luke's graduation from Boston College. Despite his reputation for hard work, family always came first for Russert. Along with hard work and respect for the truth, this was one of the values he got from Big Russ. Sadly, the first Sunday following his death was Father's Day. As much as he will be missed by his fans and colleagues in politics and jounalism, it's hard to imagine what a loss this is to his wife and son.

The Father's Day broadcast of Meet the Press was dedicated to Tim's memory. Tom Brokaw, Doris Kearns Goodwin, James Carville, Mary Matalin, Maria Shriver and others recalled Tim in anecdotes, and clips of some of his many interviews were played. The question is, where will NBC go now? As Tim always said at the end of each broadcast, "If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press." It has been for 61 years, longer than any other show on network television. I'm sure it will be for many years to come, but without Tim Russert, it won't be the same.

Over the years, Time Russert has been accorded many awards and honors.

To wrap up this brief and inadequate tribute, here is a quote from Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, about Tim Russert's impact.

"Tim Russert was a transformative jounalist. He changed American television news, by bringing to it his own values: integrity, fairness, good humor, humility, and a unique sense of how reporting, history and politics are bound together. He was masterful at exposing hypocrisy. I knew him as a source, a colleague, a competitor, and - on the air - as the subject of his tough questions. His approach to every role was always the same: he loved what he did, and sought a way to tell the truth, often unconventionally."