Russert's fault? A lack of outrage

So which is it? Is Russert the lantern-jawed tough guy many of us thought he was, the hard-boiled lawyer-turned-journo who hoists wayward pols on their own rhetorical petards? Or is he really just a Beltway Cowardly Lion who blows hard but allows his prey to wink and nudge their way out of tight spots with the nation's future at stake? (An NBC spokeswoman, citing the sensitive nature of the court testimony, said neither Russert nor network officials would comment.)

Evidence for Russert as a big softie has long existed. In 2004, when it came time to leverage his celebrity into a book-length treatise, he gave us not the standard "how I became an intrepid reporter" odyssey, the broadcast journalists' default choice, but rather "Big Russ and Me," a sentimental memoir of his categorically decent but emotionally withholding Irish-Catholic father.

"Big Russ" may not stack up as great literature, but it became a surprise bestseller and humanized Russert to millions who'd known him simply as a guy who liked to play "gotcha" with elected officials.

But writing a heartwarming book that merchants might file alongside "Tuesdays With Morrie" doesn't help demonstrate journalistic toughness. And watching "Meet the Press" over the last few weeks, I think I can understand why both Cheney's office and critics such as Huffington believe Russert can be readily controlled.

As an interviewer, Russert relies on documentary evidence to ask the pointed questions you want asked and answered. He hardly permits our leaders to slip away freely. Russert aggressively pursued, for example, the U.S. failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during President Bush's February 2004 appearance on "Meet the Press."

But Russert can seem overly dispassionate, particularly during a time when opinion has increasingly bled into the news. And it's the lack of emotion that can make his approach look, after a while, less like real toughness than a facsimile of it.

Outrage is the reporter's ultimate stock in trade, from Oriana Fallaci jabbing Ayatollah Khomeini over Islamic veils to the on-camera meltdowns of Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith during Hurricane Katrina. But Russert doesn't do outrage. He doesn't pound his desk and tell guests to shut up, like Bill O'Reilly. He doesn't try to pry open subjects by telling them, as Mike Wallace is known to have done, that their story is "pabulum." He's not on the receiving end of angry lectures, like the kind that Bill Clinton gave Chris Wallace, or the kind Dan Rather seemed to get from everyone.