We’ve Only Begun to Miss Tim Russert

Coming: lies, innuendo and the season of nastiness

June 2008 By Denny Hatch

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I was zipping around the Internet and bopping in and out of my e-mail when a Yahoo headline hit me in the face: “Tim Russert dies.”

I clicked on the news story and couldn’t believe it. I still don’t.

Russert’s passing at age 58 is a national catastrophe.

Look out politicians. Beware business folks.

In this GOTCHA! world, the goo-goos are gonna getcha.

Memories of Tim Russert
The last time I spent quality time with Russert was watching him on May 20, the night of the final major primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. He was pumped, bubbling with enthusiasm, his eyes shining. My God he loved politics! And how he loved his job(s)—moderator of “Meet the Press,” chief of the NBC News Washington Bureau and VP of NBC News.

Russert had two qualities unmatched in television journalism:

1. His incredible knowledge and foresight. Who can ever forget Election Day 2000, when he announced the three states that would determine the outcome. Whereupon he held up sign on which was scrawled:

FLORIDA!
FLORIDA!
FLORIDA!

2. He brilliantly articulated the political process. Tim Russert had no agenda and played no favorites. Process and results were everything. With all other newscasters and talking heads, you can smell their biases, prejudices and nastiness right through the TV screen.

Rival network CBS so revered Russert that it took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to mourn his passing. (See illustration below.)

The Bad Stuff Coming
Dirt—and Gotcha! tactics—are already beginning to fly thanks to the goo-goos, those “Good Government” reformers who first surfaced at the end of the 19th century. Today’s goo-goos spread outrageous stories to further their own agendas while hiding behind anonymous Web sites, network news and talk shows.

Who can forget Michelle Obama’s line, “And let me tell you something, for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country”?

The goo-goos at CNN played this 24/7 as an endless loop. Tennessee Republican goo-goos jumped on it and made a four-minute anti-Obama video, playing Michelle Obama’s gaffe seven times interspersed with ordinary folks claiming pride of country. Fringe stuff? It drew 773,563 views—more than twice the typical cable talk show audience. See it for yourself.

GOTCHA! Michelle!

Whoops! Wait! On MSNBC’s “Verdict,” Dan Abrams broadcast several instances where John McCain said, “I didn’t really love America until I was deprived of her company.”

Abrams ran it again and again, and had a panel discuss it.

GOTCHA! John!”

A headline in The New York Times of last Saturday cried: “Bloomberg, in Florida, Blasts Rumor About Obama.” The rumor: a massive Internet whisper campaign that Obama is a Muslim. GOTCHA! Barack.

In that same edition of The Times there was another headline: “Ready to Attack Obama, if Some Money Arrives.” Michael Luo detailed the Web site, ExposeObama.com, which propagates the Obama-Muslim rumor. The perpetrator is Floyd Brown, 47, master political dirty trickster, whose Independent “Willie Horton” campaign virtually destroyed Michael Dukakis’s chances to beat George H.W. Bush for the presidency in 1988. Luo writes, “A Bible verse taped to a whiteboard in Floyd Brown’s office that he uses to track his efforts to attack Senator Barack Obama reads, ‘That is why for Christ’s sake I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.’”

Obama’s Broken Pledge
At some point during the primaries, Barack Obama promised to accept public financing for his campaign in the general election if he were to become the nominee. He recently renounced that pledge.

“They call that ‘liar, liar, pants on fire,’” raged “Roll Call” executive editor Mort Kondracke on Brit Hume’s “Fox News Special Report.” He continued:

But in the general election, they would be even-steven at $84 million, and it would be a fair fight. And [Obama] started saying that McCain won’t stop 527s, independent committees. Well, there are plenty of Democratic 527 independent committees as well.

I’ve been collecting Obama’s e-mails with an eye toward doing a story on his fascinating use of the Internet to raise money. From Obama’s e-mail last Friday:

Choosing not to accept these taxpayer funds was not an easy decision. I remain committed to fundamental campaign finance reform, and as president I will work to fix this broken system.

But we’re facing opponents who have become masters at gaming the broken system as it stands today — collecting money from Washington lobbyists, special interest PACs, and relying on so-called 527 groups that can take unlimited contributions to peddle lies and smears.

A case in point, the “Swift boat” campaign that the haughty, patrician John Kerry chose to ignore instead of countering instantly. It sunk Kerry’s bid for the presidency.

Astonishingly, in this past Sunday’s New York Times was a story that Kerry and his fellow Vietnam warriors are finally getting around to refuting the Swift boat charges. Four years later. With that kind of reaction time, you have to question Kerry’s qualifications to be president.

Obama, on the other hand, is setting up an Internet war room to vacuum the media and the Web and immediately refute any racial, religious, hate or anti-Michelle slurs.

Is the racial issue smoke or fire? In Sunday’s Washington Post, Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta reported that three in 10 Americans admit to race bias.

Obama wants more than the $84 million limit on public financing—to which he’d be beholden if accepting federal funds—to fight this. He told a fundraising audience in Jackson, Miss., on June 9:

It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. “He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?” We know the strategy because they’ve already shown their cards. Ultimately I think the American people recognize that old stuff hasn’t moved us forward. That old stuff just divides us.

The Democrats’ Playbook
Don’t get me wrong. The Democrats will also play hardball, hyping McCain’s age, his flip-flop on drilling for oil, saying it would be OK to remain in Iraq for 100 years and—according to the Annenberg Foundation’s FactCheck.org—the statistic that he voted with Bush 95% of the time in the Senate.

Chances are Obama won’t personally get into the gutter, but watch for Democrat 527 PACs to come out with TV trash referring to the Republican nominee as “Senator McBush.”

Is Tim Russert irreplaceable?

Yes.

Tom Brokaw produced guffaws in the SRO crowd at Russet’s Kennedy Center memorial on June 18:

And as Tim would look out on this gathering, he would say, “It’s wild! Wild!” My family, my closest friends from near and far, the powerful, the ordinary, and the largest contingent of all in this room, those who think that they should be his successor on “Meet the Press.”

It was announced on Sunday that Brokaw himself will host “Meet the Press” through the 2008 Election.

Of all the journalists—in print and broadcast—only Tim Russert could brush aside the goo-goos and the bad-bads and get the story fair and square.

As Robert Stein wrote on TheModerateVoice.com:

I have read that Russert kept his MSNBC appearances to a minimum. If he lost the trust of the people to be objective, he lost everything. He recounted talking to Lawrence Spivak, the moderator of “Meet the Press” before Russert got the job. Russert asked Spivak: what is “Meet the Press”? Spivak told Russert always to learn everything he could about the guest’s politics and conventions, and then to take the other side.

The great eulogy of the afternoon was delivered by Sister Lucille Socciarelli, now in her 80s, Russert’s grade school teacher at the Sisters of Mercy in Buffalo, N.Y., where she taught for 55 years. After warm remembrances of this extraordinary kid—his intellect, energy, faith and enthusiasm—Sister Lucille bowled over the full house with her closing line:

In my mind and heart, ever since Friday, June 13, I hear God, “Here’s little Timmy Russert. You’re in heaven now, Tim, where every day is ‘Meet the Press.’ Welcome home.”

God took Tim Russert from us far to soon.