Fumbling the Big One

"We have nothing to announce," NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said yesterday. Gregory, 38, declined to comment. The sources, confirming a report this week in the Huffington Post, would discuss private personnel matters only on condition of anonymity.

The other leading contender for the job has been Chuck Todd, NBC's political director, who has blossomed into the network's premier political analyst since the primaries began in January, despite a lack of previous television experience. It is not clear how Gregory's ascension would affect Todd's role, which had also been filled by Russert.

NBC had considered an ensemble format that could have included Gregory, Todd, NBC's Andrea Mitchell and PBS's Gwen Ifill as a way to avoid a tough choice, but the network eventually decided against it, sources said.

Gregory clearly has the requisite journalistic experience and is accustomed to verbal sparring. As a White House reporter, he frequently clashed with President Bush's spokesmen and became a constant target for conservatives who viewed his aggressive style as partisanship. After Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a hunting companion, Gregory scolded press secretary Scott McClellan: "Don't tell me you're giving us complete answers when you're not actually answering the question." On another occasion, Gregory said: "Don't be a jerk to me personally when I'm asking you a serious question." Gregory later apologized to McClellan.

As a substitute co-host on "Today," Gregory displayed an easy on-air manner that meshed well with the morning-television genre. He received additional training this year as host of the MSNBC talk show "Race for the White House" -- now "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" -- and was tapped as moderator during major political events after the cable network decided that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews were too opinionated for that role.

Skeptics say that Gregory has a less-than-commanding screen presence as a host, leading them to question whether he could sustain viewer interest in the hour-long Sunday program. The son of a Broadway producer, he might need a bit more showmanship.

NBC also has to weigh the possibility that, if Gregory is passed over, he might leave when his contract expires next year. ABC is said to be interested in him.

As an 18-year-old freshman at American University, Gregory cut a deal with the ABC affiliate in Tucson to use him as a Washington correspondent. He joined NBC as a Chicago-based correspondent in 1996. Bush nicknamed the 6-foot-5 correspondent "Stretch" early in his tenure and later downgraded him to "Little Stretch."

If Gregory is tapped, it would set off a chain reaction in which NBC would likely want to craft a prominent role for the popular Todd and MSNBC would need a new 6 p.m. host. The leading contender for Gregory's White House job appears to be NBC correspondent Samantha Guthrie.

A Gregory promotion would represent an opportunity and a challenge for ABC's George Stephanopoulos, whose program, "This Week," is second in the ratings, behind "Meet the Press." Ratings for all the Sunday shows are expected to decline next year, in the wake of the yearlong drama of a presidential election.

I led off yesterday with how conservatives are grudgingly giving credit to President-in-Waiting Barack Obama. Rich Lowry is the latest:

"Barack Obama's leftward positioning and achingly idealistic rhetoric in the Democratic primaries harkened back to George McGovern or Robert Kennedy. His personnel choices during the transition instead recall Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts technocrat who notoriously ran on competence. Obama is too savvy a marketer to have tried to make a campaign slogan out of practicality. But who would have guessed that when he lit up the crowd back in 2007 at Iowa's Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner with his signature speech denouncing the ways of Washington and Democrats who accommodated Bush foreign policy, he harbored a secret desire to draw on experienced Republicans to manage his national-security policy?