Tim Russert: A Brief Farewell to a Good But Short Life

I'm not a skilled or even able eulogist. But because the passing of Tim Russert was such a singular focus of print and broadcast journalism yesterday, and will continue to loom large as a story throughout the weekend, I wanted to add a few words, however inadequately.

Yes, of course his death Friday was sudden and untimely, but the nation's emotional aftershock will come tomorrow morning. That's when I and millions of others will sit down, almost robotically, for our Sunday A.M. ritual of 'Meet the Press,' which Mr. Russert commanded for nearly 20 years. In fact, he did it so artfully at times he almost singlehandedly rescued that ratings-flagging program and came to command the Sunday morning talk-show format itself.

But tomorrow we won't hear those familiar words, "If it's Sunday, it's 'Meet the Press,'" spoken by Mr. Russert. And only then will we realize just how much we'll miss him.

Did I always regard his performance as fair? No, of course not. I doubt any viewer did; but that, in itself, was a sign that he was at least striving for fairness. If any interviewer or commentator fails, at various points throughout his or her career, to anger everyone over time, then he or she isn't getting the job done. So as for the question of fairness, I mostly dismissed it.

I do confess, however, to having become upset with the deeper stuff of his journalistic style at times, and I always suspected it was the result of what so many properly admired and loved Mr. Russert for: He was and remained the good Irish Catholic boy who came to represent the thoughts and feelings of Middle America.

Too much so, I often thought. Which is my way of saying, he wasn't cynical enough; which is to say further, in my opinion, he trusted in the good intentions of official authority too much.

This point was driven home to me yesterday afternoon in a rather curious tribute paid to Mr. Russert by his MSNBC colleague, Chris Matthews -- the two of whom were not the best of friends, or so I've read. But that's another story. What was peculiar -- and pertinent -- about Matthews' words was that they could be received in two radically different, radically opposing, ways.

He began by noting what I noted above: Russert's on-air appeal to millions as the voice of Middle America, a man who reflected their concerns, values and basic goodness. Matthews then pulled a rather odd example out of the hat to prove what I naturally thought would be a gracious point.

As the Bush administration was ginning up for war in Iraq, said Matthews, he once privately asked Russert for his opinion, which, according to Matthews, was a favorable one. It's the nukes, said Russert. We can't allow that. We can't allow that level of threat. We'll have to take it out.

Matthews gave the impression of being laudatory in the telling of this story. It was, he said, but one example of how close to the common people Mr. Russert was, and that made him both a popular and effective journalist.

But it was, in another sense, storytelling of quite the opposite -- as for effectiveness. For it spotlighted that in the run-up to this idiotic, unnecessary war, Mr. Russert limited himself to Establishment interviews, in which he was bound to gather nothing but Establishment opinions and thereby form the same himself.

He was, it could be argued, too much the patriot -- too trusting, too comfortable with familiar power, too "earthly" and too much of the people, and not nearly cynical enough.

As a result, he got taken for an ideological ride, carrying not a few along with him.

Still, over nearly 20 years, that instance was rather aberrant. By and large, Mr. Russert accomplished the honorable -- that is, he managed to piss off virtually everyone at some time or another, and that's what a good journalist is not necessarily supposed to do, but will do, if he's doing his job.

And he did it with class, far more than what one is likely to find anywhere else on network or cable TV. As the Washington Post's media critic, Tom Shales, observed this morning: "Russert was tough and rigorous in his questioning. One of his trademarks was using a subject's own words -- blown up and posted on the screen -- to exact a newsworthy response. But he wasn't out to draw blood or humiliate people; his credo really did seem to be 'with malice toward none.' He was by nature a fair-minded kind of a guy, and spite, bullying and nastiness were not in his playbook."

And to the New York Observer, Russert's frequent guest and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said much the same: "You never had the feeling he was trying to get somebody, he just wanted to get them to talk and wanted to get the record straight and his emotional self was as strong as his intellect. As a journalist there was such a strength of his person to everyone who knew him knew.

"He was just beloved" -- professional faults and all, which is quite a personal accomplishment.