Now that I’ve seen Tom Brokaw, I miss Tim Russert more than ever

Watched Meet The Press on Sunday, when Brokaw interviewed Barack Obama after his return from Europe & the Mid East. Boy, it reminded me how much Russert was one of a kind. Brokaw’s entire interviewing technique seemed to be to try to set up “gotcha” moments, and hope that the interviewee would fall on his face. Naturally, anybody with enough sense to get off the tracks when the train comes by can dodge these simple traps, and nobody will learn anything watching it.

Russert did a lot of research, asking complex questions about hard issues, and he would stay on the attack like a terrier when his subject would try to get clear with some dumb brush-off remark. There was simply no depth to Brokaw at all.