Black Box Report

A giant in American journalism, Tim Russert - NBC News Washington Bureau Chief and host of the seminal political gab fest Meet the Press - passed away today, dead of a heart attack while working on the job at NBC. He was 58.

I had often been a critic of Russert, not because I thought he was bad at his job, but because it was readily apparent that he had all the tools, skills and, certainly, the platform to be better at his job than he often was. And even at that, he was often leagues above his contemporaries.

And then, when we least expected it, Russert had an epiphany, of sorts:

What he said bears repeating:

MATTHEWS: What about John McCain perhaps being attended by his bad angels? Some time in October deciding that he has to win this campaign in the worst way. Isn’t there a tremendous opportunity against a guy named Barack Hussein Obama to run a very tough negative campaign and win, perhaps not in a happy country, but just win it in the worst way. Isn’t that opportunity just sitting there for him?

RUSSERT: Well, I think you heard Senator Obama talk about wedge issues of patriotism and religion, trying to put that down as a marker. I’ve heard Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser, saying that he thinks that Senator McCain should not be criticizing Senator Obama as much as he has, but be much more optimistic and not be seen or perceived as angry. But I don’t think that’s the kind of campaign Senator McCain wants to run. There may be some so-called independent groups, 527s, who might take a different tack.

But in an interesting way, based on our previous conversation, it’s a role I think the media can play, in really trying to keep pushing this back to this big debate on big issues and not get caught up in a lot of this minor skirmishing that goes on and videotape that gets released where we just run wild with it and sit back and say, what happened? Why did we not cover some of these big differences like Iraq, like Iran, like negotiating around the world, like health care? There’s profound differences between McCain and Obama in health care.

[emphasis added]

Yes, Mr. Russert, there are. And I am profoundly sorry that you won't be here to help point those out.

I speak for everyone at RNN in expressing condolences and respect to his grieving friends and family.

Sunday mornings won't be the same.