Big Shoes

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 10:08 AM

I couldn't bring myself to do it.

In this cold-blooded business we speculate about everything: who'll win the election, who will get the veep nod, whether the Lakers can battle back against the Celtics or whether Tiger can come from behind on a bum knee to win the U.S. Open.

But I couldn't, as some other reporters did, write a speculative piece about who will replace Tim Russert. Not before the body was in the ground.

For one thing, no one will "replace" Russert. He was not just the "Meet the Press" guy but the "Today" and "Nightly" political analyst, the Washington bureau chief, the MSNBC pundit and so on. Plus, NBC has no idea what it's going to do because everyone there is still grieving and rather shell-shocked.

Whoever ultimately takes over "Meet" will make it his or her own show, not try to do exactly what Russert did, just as George Stephanopoulos runs a very different "This Week" than David Brinkley did, and Chris Wallace does a very different "Fox News Sunday" than Tony Snow.

But, the chatter is out there, and Russert would never pass up a good horse race. So let's start with a nomination by Newsday's Verne Gay:

"There are so many reasons why Tom Brokaw should be the next moderator of 'Meet the Press' - at least on what might be called a 'transitional basis' - that the best way to lay them out is a list, so here goes.

"1.) Soothing for viewers AND the network: The death of Tim Russert is, like any death, disruptive, but this one was profoundly so. Russert manned this program for seventeen years and manned it brilliantly. He WAS the face of Sunday morning, to a large degree, and WAS the face of NBC's political coverage. As a result, NBC needs a new face that is also profoundly familiar and trusted. There's only one at NBC which comes to mind.

"2.) Brokaw knows the territory. He, like Russert, is an encyclopedia of political fact and trivia, so much so that he's had to bat down rumors for literally decades that he would run for office from home state South Dakota. Moreover, Brokaw has worked by Russert's side, on-screen and off, for nearly twenty-five years. No one knows the rhythm of this coverage better than Brokaw.

"3.) No one else is ready. This is beyond self-evident. Of course, there will be the insta-rumor that Katie Couric is up for the gig, but any whiff of positioning on her part will kill this possibility so quickly that heads will spin. Yes, NBCU topper Jeff Zucker wants her back NBC, or so I believe, and maybe for a role at MSNBC . . . But she won't be back, if ever, at NBC until next year. NBC needs someone next week. The others? Chris Matthews? Never ready for this job - he's too cable.

"David Gregory? Smart guy and first-rate interviewer, while his agent would dearly love him to replace Matt Lauer one of these days. I say - as good as he is - the guy's got 'trust' issues with viewers who are pretty good at reading faces on the tube. Gregory's not ready for this job, and maybe never. Brian Williams? No. Absolutely, no. Viewers - and NBC staffers - will see it as a part time gig for him, and one to which he will devote neither all his time nor energy. He'll fly down to Washington on Fridays, and back to NYC on Sundays; this schedule would devalue his role at 'Nightly,' and you can't have that.

"4.) He'll answer the call. I think and believe Brokaw will . . . He won't want this forever, but maybe he'll grow into it."

MarketWatch's Jon Friedman has a different candidate:

"David Gregory, familiar to NBC viewers for his White House coverage, should get the job. Chris Matthews should definitely not be under consideration.

"Gregory understands politics; he is a respected figure in Washington. True, he once had a reputation as a newsman who seemed to delight in tweaking and provoking politicians, especially President Bush.

"I could live without news people preening to get attention, but Gregory has come a long way. He has served his audience well by remembering that it's more important to inform than entertain viewers.

"Matthews, probably NBC News' most famous individual now that Russert has passed on, would be a horrendous selection. 'Meet the Press' doesn't need a host to put it on the map. It's already the most well-known and respected program of its kind."

It's little remembered now, but the man responsible for Russert's success is a former NBC News president, Michael Gartner, who recalls telling Russert that he was so interesting on the conference calls that he should be on the air. Russert said no.

"Eventually, he agreed to go on the Today show periodically to talk politics with his equally knowledgeable friend Al Hunt, at the time Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, and, later, as an occasional panelist on the sagging Meet the Press show. But Russert remained mainly an inside guy, an unseen face, a choreographer of coverage.

"Finally, I told him he should be -- had to be -- the moderator of Meet the Press, which wasn't doing well. 'No way,' he said again.

"We argued. We debated. We fought. He raised objections, I shot them down. At the end, he said, 'Look, I can't do it. I'm ugly.' 'Well,' I said with a laugh, 'I can't argue that one (he had a chubby face that looked like it was made out of Play-Doh) but I'm not looking for a handsome guy, I'm looking for a smart one.' " Gartner had some sweatshirts made up: "Tim Russert/Not just a pretty face."

Have we gone overboard? The Orlando Sentinel's Hal Boedeker thinks so:

"The news needs to be a mix of stories. People needed to be reminded about the Iowa floods -- people are suffering on a grand scale there. But, of course, those people live far from the Washington Beltway, and so they won't gain the vast air time accorded to journalists and politicians.

"Will journalists ask the tough questions of themselves that they ask of others? Not during grief, evidently. Brokaw hinted that Russert had his critics. Could we have heard from them? Well, no. The coverage seemed designed to put Russert on the fast track to sainthood.

"The affection that Russert stirred in millions was testament to his skill. But the coverage of his death was often overblown, self-congratulatory and self-indulgent. It was no way to treat a news icon."

Remember the chatter about the non-existent Michelle Obama tape, which prompted her husband to start an anti-smear Web site? National Review's Jim Geraghty cries foul:

"If the media is going to write about the debunked 'whitey' tape, particularly as a trigger for Obama's anti-smear site, there's really no excuse for not mentioning the two sources more responsible than anyone else for hyping the story: pro-Hillary blogger Larry Johnson and Democratic strategist Bob Beckel, who appeared on Fox News claiming a 'mighty big shoe' was about to drop regarding Michelle Obama. (Now Beckel accuses conservatives of spreading rumors about her.) Did conservative bloggers write about the tape as well? Sure, but with varying degrees of skepticism . . .

"The behavior of the mainstream media is sending a clear message to those of us on the right: do not ever help out the Obama campaign, even if you think the world would be well-served by debunking a ridiculous accusation, because no one will ever remember your efforts to get to the truth. Instead, you'll get blamed for spreading the malicious rumors."

Time's Jay Carney steps up and admits he got it wrong.

Al Gore went out on a limb last night, as the NYT reports:

"Former Vice President Al Gore made his season debut on the presidential campaign here on Monday evening, offering a vigorous endorsement of Senator Barack Obama as he urged all Democrats to rally behind the party's fall ticket . . .

"Mr. Gore had purposefully stayed on the sidelines during the long Democratic primary fight. He announced his decision to endorse Mr. Obama on Monday afternoon in a message to supporters on the former vice president's vast e-mail list. Their appearance at the Joe Louis Arena here touched off a flurry of curiosity among Democrats gathered in the crowd, with many quietly asking if Mr. Gore would be on Mr. Obama's list of prospective running mates."

Veepstakes! We just can't help ourselves, even when the man in question has already held the job for eight years. (What will his slogan be, Ready on Day One? A Perfect Number Two? He Already Knows His Way Around the Mansion?)

"Gore said all the right things in his endorsement speech," says the L.A. Times, "except he noticeably left out the last Democratic president, the one who chose to elevate Gore from has-been senator to his running mate and has been the only Democrat elected president twice since World War II, which is like the Middle Ages for today's voters."

The media's veep-vetting continues, with Richard Just in the New Republic:

"I am amazed at how many Democrats have fallen for Jim Webb. Suddenly, everywhere you look, people are touting Webb as the perfect running mate for Barack Obama. In recent days, as Webb has seemed ubiquitous (hawking his book, bantering with Jon Stewart, grinning at Obama's side), a disturbing number of my otherwise sane friends, family, and colleagues have told me that they view Webb as a perfectly acceptable choice--or, more disturbingly, a good one.

"This madness has to stop. Now. Unless we want to end up with a vice president who harbors a worldview that is fundamentally illiberal, not to mention downright creepy . . .

"Not only is Webb not a liberal; he is pretty much the opposite of one. I realize The Weekly Standard may not be the most credible judge of a candidate's liberal credentials; but the magazine ran a great piece about Webb in 2006 that called him 'the most sophisticated right-wing reactionary to run on a Democratic ticket since Grover Cleveland.' . . .

"There is also his well-documented misogyny (he once wrote an article called 'Women Can't Fight' and famously denounced the investigation of the Tailhook sex-abuse scandal as a 'witch hunt'). Then there is his glorification of violence. It is one thing to accept a certain level of state-sanctioned violence as necessary to the preservation of a just order--to endorse certain wars abroad or certain police strategies at home. But it is quite another thing to glorify violence, to celebrate it, to elevate its practice into a virtue--which is exactly what Webb seems to do in his books."

One Democrat seems to be lobbying for the job, the Boston Globe reports:

"For two decades, [Sam] Nunn has been floated as a potential vice presidential candidate by virtue of his national security credentials and conservative southern roots. And each time he has dismissed such talk out of hand, while the party's nominees opted for more liberal choices from states more likely to go Democratic in November . . .

"Those close to Nunn, speaking on condition of anonymity, say he seems more prepared to accept a vice presidential offer this year, helping to offset Obama's lack of experience on national security and giving the Democrats a fighting chance in Georgia."

I thought we were done with the Hillary Clinton-as-veep stories, but noooo. Salon, in fact, has two. Ed Kilgore argues in favor:

"It is an idea that is far more popular with rank-and-file Democrats than with the chattering classes. Polls show that a consistent majority of the self-identified Democrats -- and big majorities of those who voted for Clinton in the primaries -- favor putting her on the ticket. In the few days between Obama's victory speech and Clinton's concession, there were rumblings of an organized effort in Congress (and hence among superdelegates) to endorse the unity ticket, but Clinton's instructions to supporters to refrain from pressuring Obama drove such talk underground.

"I don't think there's much doubt that Clinton's supers and donors would be very pleased to see her at least asked to go on the ticket. There is also abundant, alarming evidence that a significant share of Clinton primary voters are currently peeved enough to stay home in November or vote for John McCain. Will many of these voters 'get over it' and get with the program absent a pro-Clinton gesture? Almost certainly. But does that justify dismissing the whole problem as something that will take care of itself? Not if you care about winning what may be a close election."

Thomas Schaller says no way:

"If Clinton really wants to help Obama, her people should leak out the notion that she expects to be picked, even if it's untrue. That way, when Obama picks somebody else it will reinforce his image as a candidate who doesn't bend to political pressure -- exactly how he must project himself to fair-weather Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans . . . Obama ought to promise her whatever she wants, including if not especially the first shot at a Supreme Court seat. She'd be a great justice.

"The Clintons -- plural -- are a potentially dangerous campaign distraction. The Clintons are great campaigners and clever strategists, but Obama has already put together a first-rate campaign team without relying on the Clintons' stable of advisors. The unavoidable truth is that having the Clintons on the campaign trail will draw too much of the spotlight away from Obama."

Does Obama's hiring yesterday of Patti Solis Doyle, the ousted Hillary campaign manager, help her chances? The problem, says Carpetbagger's Steve Benen, is that Doyle and Clinton seem to have severed diplomatic relations:

"If the goal of the Obama campaign was to have a Clinton ally in place to 'ease' the transition, the very last person they'd pick is Patti Solis Doyle. For that matter, I thought initially that maybe this could be spun as a 'unity' move -- the Obama campaign has placed Clinton's former campaign manager in a prominent position. See? We can all get along!

"Except, that doesn't quite work here, either. Obama won't get credit for hiring a top Clinton aide who Clinton no longer talks to."

This New Yorker profile of Keith Olbermann by Peter Boyer contains some eye-opening quotes, such as Keith describing Chris Matthews as being "like an out-of-control sprinkler system." And MSNBC boss Phil Griffin explaining why Hillary supporters are upset with Olbermann: "It was, like, you meet a guy and you fall in love with him, and he's funny and he's clever and he's witty, and he's all these great things. And then you commit yourself to him, and he turns out to be a jerk and difficult and brutal. And that is how the Hillary viewers see him. It's true. But I do think they're going to come back. There's nowhere else to go."

Joan Walsh offers Griffin some advice: "Don't tell your customers they have nowhere else to go. Also: Try to avoid comparing irritated female viewers with wives and girlfriends who have to stay with a 'jerk' who is 'difficult and brutal.' It's insulting to Olbermann and his female critics alike."

Finally, find out why Laura Ingraham has been knocked off the air.