The print edition tomorrow will have a short tribute to Tim Russert, someone I humbly idolized. Plus as always the Quotes of the Week and Save the Date. All this for the pleasurable price of 50 cents.
I was just talking about Russert’s passing with one of our copy editors, and he said his wife had up until this year been apathetic to politics. With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John McCain presenting an unprecedented election year, our copy editor’s spouse became engaged, and it was Russert who welcomed her in every Sunday. That speaks to Russert’s appeal. He was an everyman. There was nothing particularly glamorous about Russert, and that’s the way I think he would want it. No thousand-dollar haircut. Just a pleasant face and demeanor at ease whether in front of a camera, in the Oval Office asking George W. Bush whether the Iraq war was one of “necessity” or “choice” or at a working-class bar in his hometown of Buffalo.
Russert represented all of us on Sunday mornings. None of us can call the President of the United States on the phone and ask him pointed questions about his policies, or for that matter a candidate or congress member sorely in need of accountability. We leaned on Russert for that.
