Tribute to Tim Russert (1950-2008)
News media giant Tim Russert died today from a heart attack. Russert was 58 years old.
Russert was best known as the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” and a frequent commentator on other NBC and MSNBC news shows.
Tim Russert played an important role in this 2008 presidential campaign, including being a moderator of one of the final debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which took place in Cleveland, Ohio on February 26th, 2008. Here is the entire transcript as printed in the New York Times.
Watch this short video excerpt of perhaps Russert’s most memorable and widely quoted statement in the 2008 campaign.
Some news analysts pointed out that once Tim Russert declared that Obama would win the nomination, the race was effectively over. Russert’s opinion was perhaps the most respected in all of election news media.
News junkies will greatly miss Tim Russert. He has been an outstanding analyst and intelligent voice in television news for decades.
Russert had unparalleled insight into presidential election campaigns as demonstrated by this excerpt from the Wikipedia article:
Russert calculated possible United States Electoral College outcomes on a marker board on the air during NBC’s coverage of the 2000 presidential election and memorably summed up the outcome as dependent upon “Florida, Florida, Florida.” Russert again accurately predicted the final battleground of the presidential elections of 2004: “Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.” On the MSNBC show Tucker, Russert predicted the battleground states of the 2008 presidential election would be New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada, saying, “If Democrats can win three of those four, they can lose Ohio and Florida, and win the presidency.”
I find it unfortunate that so many people casually bash the news media. Tim Russert provided a great service to the public and he will be sorely missed.
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Comment by Grace
Posted on June 16, 2008 at 6:32 am
Thank you for those wonderful words about this special man. It’s Monday morning and I am still feeling such a loss for him and I’ve been wondering why. Aside from his brilliance as a moderataor of Meet the Press and everything we know about his work. I think it’s because I know him. I know him from my Irish Catholic roots in Chicago. I know him from my local parish, my local neighborhood, our local restaurants and bars where everyone in the “patch” hung out. Families especially welcome anywhere. I know him because I have known so many men like Russert in my life. The good guys, the ones who really and truly love their famiies and friends. They belong to some exclusive club that cannot be found in D.C. I have never seen anything like the fraternal love and loyalty that these men have for each other. It’s the exclusive club of the Irish Catholic working class neighborhood guys. And they are instantly recognizable. I saw that in Russert from the start. I immediately trusted him. He truly was “one of the guys” who made it big but always came home. Men have this gift of friendship that women do not and I have always envied their brotherhood. Here’s to my friend and neighbor, Tim Russert. He lives in us all. It is the Christ-consciousness and we can all take it to work with us today.
Comment by Joe
Posted on June 25, 2008 at 12:48 am
Tim Russert was biased against Hillary Clinton and promoted Obama every chance he had throughout the primary election! So, I do not agree with all his cohorts.