June 13, 2008, 4:51 pm
Washington Mourns Loss of Tim Russert
Susan Davis reports on Russert’s death.
The shock of the untimely death of Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press,” reverberated across and outside Washington today as the politicians, candidates and pundits who sat across the table from Russert on his popular Sunday morning news show mourned his passing. According to news reports, Russert, 58 years old, died of an apparent heart attack while at work in Washington. (See Tom Brokaw’s news report.)
Tim Russert (Associated Press)
Speaking in Columbus, Ohio, Barack Obama recalled meeting Russert for the first time at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “He’s somebody who overtime I came to consider not only a journalist but a friend,” Obama told reporters, “There wasn’t a better interviewer in television, a more thoughtful analyzer of politics and he was also one of the finest men I knew, somebody who cared about America, cared about the issues, cared about his family. I am grief stricken with the loss and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. And I hope that even though Tim is irreplaceable that the standard that he set in his professional life and family life are standards that we’ll all carry with us in our own lives.”
John McCain offered similar remarks, calling Russert “a great journalist and a great American.”
“Tim Russert was at the top of his profession, he was a man of honesty and integrity. He was hard but he was always fair. We miss him,” McCain said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and we know that Tim Russert leaves a legacy of integrity of the highest level of journalism and we miss him and we will miss him a lot,” he said.
“The momentous nature of this election will not be captured as well without Tim Russert,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who has worked since 1989 with Russert on the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
In 1989, Russert coordinated with Al Hunt, then the WSJ’s Washington bureau chief, to form the first media-sponsored poll so that the network and the newspaper would have a public-opinion source independent of the candidates’ own polls. They enlisted one pollster from each party; while the Republican pollsters have changed, Hart continues to conduct the polls.
“It was the first media poll to use outside pollsters and became the standard,” said Hunt, now Washington chief for Bloomberg News, and a longtime friend of Russert. “We put it together seamlessly. In 16 years, we always had fun and never had a disagreement. That’s because he was always right.”
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Damn! One of the last great journalist and a great American. My Sunday mornings will not be the same. Whoever takes over has some gigantic shoes to fill.
