Tim Russert

For 15 minutes at the very top of their final pre-March 4 Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded mind-numbingly wonkish soliloquies about the details of their health care plans. To any candidates for master’s degrees in Heath Care Policy who might have been watching, the dialogue was possibly beneficial.

To the remaining 99.9 percent of the viewing audience, it was an incoherent exchange in which both candidates seemed to be reaching into the minutiae of their opponent’s plan in an effort to play a particularly demagogic brand of gotcha.

For these viewers, there was no clear winner or loser during the health care portion of the debate. But then the topic changed and Clinton decided, out of a frustration that has been mounting for months it seemed, to vent some of her displeasure with the media.  read more »

During a grilling of Ralph Nader on Sunday morning, Tim Russert noted that the 73-year-old consumer advocate is now launching his third presidential campaign and asked if Nader was worried about becoming the Wendell Willkie of his generation.

Actually, the independent bid that Nader announced on “Meet the Press” will be his fifth White House campaign: Besides his 2004 and 2000 efforts, there was also 1996, when he ran as the Green Party’s nominee in about 10 states; and 1992, when he ran as a write-in candidate in a series of Democratic primaries to protest the lack of a “none of the  read more »

Brian Williams and Tim Russert came to tonight’s debate prepared to moderate—or perhaps to instigate—an argument over the role of race in the Democratic presidential campaign and the matter of who first introduced the subject.

But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanted none of it. And neither did an unknown member of the audience in Las Vegas, who interrupted the proceedings about 20 minutes in with loud castigations of the moderators and their “race-based” questions.

Williams and Russert devoted the first segment of the debate to various facets of the race question, which has dominated news coverage of the Democratic contest for the past few days, and they were anxious to force both leading candidates to address the way the subject has been used by their own campaigns.  read more »

A Nevada judge ruled yesterday afternoon that MSBNC will have to include Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich in tonight’s debate—or face a possible injunction halting the televised event from occurring.

“The judge called it a matter of fairness and said Nevada voters will benefit if they hear from more than just Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards,” the AP reported Monday afternoon.  read more »

On Tuesday Jan. 15, MSNBC will host a debate among Democratic presidential candidates live from Las Vegas.

According to today's announcement from MSNBC, the debate will focus on "issues important to minority voters" and will be sponsored a number of groups, including the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 100 Black Men of America, and the Democratic African-American Leadership Council.

Brian Williams and Tim Russert will moderate.  read more »

Speaking of Ron Paul ... blogger Ben Fritz catches NBC's Tim Russert making an embarrassing error during his interview with the Republican presidential candidate on last Sunday's Meet The Press.

At one point, Mr. Russert asked his guest: "You say you're a strict constructionist of the Constitution, and yet you want to amend the Constitution to say that children born here should not automatically be U.S. citizens."  read more »

There are two Mitt Romneys—the one who ran twice in Massachusetts as a moderate-to-liberal Republican and the one now running for the G.O.P. presidential nomination as a red-meat conservative.

When these two diametrically opposite characters end up meeting each other, awkward comedy ensues. Case in point: this weekend.  read more »

Fortune smiled on Mike Huckabee today.

The former Arkansas Governor, suddenly the front-runner in Iowa, was supposed to come under intense fire from Mitt Romney at this afternoon’s Republican debate in Des Moines—the last head-to-head encounter between the candidates before the January 3 caucuses.

And the set-up seemed perfect for Mr. Romney, whose Mormonism has probably contributed to the stunning rise of Mr. Huckabee, a personable Baptist preacher who may be more culturally compatible with Iowa’s formidable bloc of Christian conservatives.  read more »

In case you missed it, here’s Rudy Giuliani explaining to Tim Russert yesterday why Judith Nathan had taxpayer-funded security before their relationship went public.

It just goes to show that in the world of Republican presidential politics, there’s no such thing as being too conservative on gay rights.

The news that Mike Huckabee advocated the quarantine of AIDS patients in 1992—the same year an H.I.V.-positive Magic Johnson was a starter on the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team and was named M.V.P. of the N.B.A.’s All-Star Game—is actually expected to boost his credibility with the Christian conservatives who hold sway in critical early primary and caucus states, like Iowa and South Carolina.  read more »

Mr. Russert has found a safe way to be a bully and to embarrass those who do not have the protection afforded by the role of journalist.  read more »

For the love of God, please stop enabling them.  read more »

The Clinton campaign continues with what it clearly regards as the winning theme of Hillary-as-mugging-victim after this week's debate. Here's a fund-raising letter just sent out to supporters by Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle:

 

If you saw the debate Tuesday night, or if you've seen the news coverage since, then you know that this campaign has entered a new phase.

On that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one.

The rest after the jump.  read more »

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Edwards and Obama leapt at the chance to take Clinton to task for what they said was her inability to talk straight with the American people.  read more »

After the influential Meet the Press audience had turned its television sets off, Mr. Dodd at last offered a truly newsworthy pronouncement that might have ramifications both on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hill.  read more »

Mr. Edwards is contributing mightily to the base’s deeply flawed reading of the political realities in Congress when it comes to ending the Iraq war.  read more »

Mr. Obama passed, yet again, on a high-profile chance to fuel his second-place candidacy with a badly needed sense of urgency.  read more »

In case you missed it, Hillary Clinton had a busy day yesterday, making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows (and getting a particularly tough time of it from Chris Wallace, whose career has profited greatly from Clinton-sassing).

At around the 3:40 mark on this clip of Meet the Press is another confrontational moment, as Tim Russert reads a series of her statements about whether to withdraw troops from Iraq by a certain date, and concludes, “You’ve changed your mind.”

Hillary’s reply: “Well, the circumstances on the ground have certainly compelled me to continue to evaluate what is in the best interest of our country and our troops."

And speaking of making the rounds, Councilman David Weprin will be debating Pat Buchanan on Harball tonight over whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ought to be allowed to speak at Columbia University, Weprin’s office just told me.

That’s at 5 p.m.

Then, at 7 p.m., Weprin will debate the same issue with Glenn Beck on CNN.

On Sunday, the idea that Kerry ever considered using McCain as a running-mate seemed laughable.  read more »

On Meet the Press this Sunday, David Broder, the supposed “dean” of the Washington press corps, demonstrated that on at least one topic he’s well ahead of his fellow journalists.  read more »

The government put I.  read more »

The flimsy philosophizing of Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and aspiring Presidential ca  read more »

What an irony, that a war advanced by many as an alternative to forging a peace in Jerusalem—indeed who saw it as a clean break from such negotiations—has had the opposite effect.

And how revealing, that in seizing on the Golan provision of the report as one of its greatest challenges, Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell just now on MS-NBC both described the return of these high, watered lands as something "we" were being asked to do: Americans, American politicians. As though we might snap our fingers and this ally in the Middle East would respond. The Baker report was also forthright on this point. "No American Administration—Democrat or Republican—will ever abandon Israel."

Few would disagree that George Bush is the worst president since—at least—Herbert Hoover. Bill Clinton will have a roll of historical toilet paper trailing off his heel wherever he goes, thanks to his bad judgment in the Paula Jones case, but George Bush is forever manacled in history's dank dungeon by his bad judgment on Iraq.

Herewith, a Hail Mary play for Bush 43.

The other night, Charlie Rose asked Tim Russert who Bush would want to follow him as President. Great question, Russert said. Then he said that if Cheney was somehow forced to leave the VP spot, Bush's choice would be Condoleezza Rice. The two get along, he trusts her.

Bush should be the decider right now. He should seek the resignation of the toxic Buddha and nominate Rice to step in, under his 25th Amendment powers. Notwithstanding the complete disaster that Bush has unleashed on the world and on world opinion of the U.S., naming the first black vice president, and the first woman, would make all of us proud of him in spite of ourselves—including historians.

Of all possible explanations for the mainstream media’s preoccupation with the Clinton marriage, t  read more »

The shoe being on the other foot, Tim Russert of NBC took the opportunity of being interviewed by Brian Lamb on Washington Journal this morning to complain about an interview of him that the Times Magazine ran on Mother's Day. Russert said that reporter Deborah Solomon merged answers to different questions so as to make it appear that they were answers to one question. He said that the Times embarrassed him by titling it an interview about his father, when it was about his mother. He said that he had written a long letter to the Times, after complaining to Solomon, and that the Times hadn't run it yet. "What else are you going to do?" Brian Lamb said. "I don't know what else I can do," Russert lamented (beside bitch about it on national television).

In the mandala of press abuses, this one doesn't rate. Most authors—the Times interview coincided with a new book by Russert—would happily accept Russert's treatment. A lot of what Solomon evidently did goes with the territory of magazine writing, making things easier for people to read. Russert never said that Solomon misquoted him or misrepresented his words or ideas. Oh, he doesn't like the headline. Russert needs to absorb the lesson of Big Russ, his father, and take it like a man.

This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert had a table of religious experts and at the end said they just had enough time for each of them to give a twenty second message for people on Easter. Well, then the pastor on the remote said something about Jesus, Professor Seyed Hossein Nasr said something about common religious values the world over, Rabbi Michael Lerner said something about getting past nationalistic ideas of faith, Sister Joan Chittister said a few inspiring words about Growing with god, and then the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a neoconservative, rattled on and on about God giving up his only son Jesus and what this means to all religions... He went on for a long time, over 30 seconds. So when Russert turned to the last guy on the panel, Jon Meacham of Newsweek, he had to apologize, but they were out of time.

Neuhaus had left out a basic spiritual value, unselfishness.

On the evening of Sunday, Aug.  read more »

Growing up in Buffalo, Tim Russert knew nothing about one of the city's landmarks, the Prudential bu  read more »

"Is he out of his mind?"Does he have the faintest idea what he's talking about?"  read more »

Ever since the invasion of Iraq last spring, American and British troops have been sweeping through  read more »

Wednesday, July 23On Monday, July 21, Tom Bettag, the longtime executive producer of Nightline , who  read more »

When the tank pulled Saddam's statue down in Baghdad, and Iraqis-a small crowd of them, anyway-jumpe  read more »

It's an avalanche from the front.  read more »

The cast of every Presidential election traditionally includes at least one hired genius, a role cur  read more »

On the street, in the subway, through the halls of New York University, your reasonably attentive co  read more »