The Reporter Who Speaks for Obama

But how much of a gotcha is it, really, when you're confronting the guest with his or her own words?

New Yorker Editor David Remnick:

"Google was his tool and Gotcha his game. But it was Gotcha at its highest form. Russert's gift was to employ his bluff, nice-guy, good-son Irish Catholic upstate persona ('Go Bills!') to offset the avidity with which he would trip up his interlocutors. Arianna Huffington, who once called Russert a "conventional wisdom zombie," was among the many critics who pressed him to go much further, but Russert, more than anyone with a remotely equivalent job, did not back off easily, whether it was with Dick Cheney, in 2002, peddling nonsense about Iraq or with Al Gore, in 2000, trying to ease his way out of a line of questioning on abortion . . .

"There were limits to his approach, and blogs both liberal and conservative sometimes purveyed the notion that he was nothing more than a cozy role-player in the Beltway drama. That notion was deeply unfair. His preparation insured that a politician could not drift long in a mental comfort zone. After one particularly contentious Sunday session, John McCain recalled that he told Russert, 'I hadn't had so much fun since my last interrogation in prison camp.' That expression of grudging admiration may well have been McCain's clever means of D.C. ingratiation, but one can guess it's not one he would have thought to extend to most of Russert's network and cable colleagues."

Politico's Roger Simon:

"Last year, just before the Iowa caucuses, when I was standing in the lobby of the Des Moines Marriott hotel nervously waiting for a cab that was never going to arrive for an appointment for which I was already late, Tim came up and put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Hey, I've got a car. I'll drive you.' And he did. Just like that. He was not a creature of Washington. He was a kid from Buffalo, and it showed. People in Buffalo treat each other like neighbors, and that's the way Tim treated people."

Walter Shapiro in Salon:

"TV news is built around illusion, from the powder-puff makeup artists to the off-screen producers dictating detailed instructions into the earpieces of the on-air talent. As a result, it remains the perfect medium for newscasters and guests to present themselves as something they are not. But there was no blow-dried artifice to Russert, no secret Svengali bequeathing him unearned wisdom. He came across in private conversations on the campaign trail pretty much as he did in public, as bright, bemused, bipartisan, Buffalo-centric and a bit bedazzled by his own good fortune in life. For all his televised ferocity when he trapped a sputtering politician in a web of contradictions, Russert was a true Happy Warrior."

And Howard Fineman has a nice recollection about how Russert dealt with his aging dad.

Back to Politics

Obama was back in church yesterday--no, not that one--and, the Chicago Tribune reports, had this to say:

" 'If we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many fathers also are missing, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.'

"The theme of fatherly responsibility is important for Obama, especially now that he is the presumed Democratic nominee for the White House. While his dogma is decidedly liberal, his talk about personal responsibility crafts an appeal to religious conservatives and political centrists. And while he clearly aims the message at Americans of all races, he has chosen more than once to broadcast that message from black churches."