Russert had a gusto for politics leavened with affability

Journalism is, at best, a fairly ephemeral trade. Tim Russert is one of those rare journalists who actually leaves a legacy because he was the right man at the right time with the right technique.

In 1991, when Russert took over "Meet the Press," the Sunday morning television interview show had become pretty much a mannered and moribund genre. Russert, who joined NBC in 1984, quickly changed that and -- within a year -- a dying show had been doubled in length to one hour and renamed, "Meet the Press With Tim Russert." The host, who by then was also NBC's Washington bureau chief, brought to bear a couple of qualities uniquely suited to the format and the era.

Jesuit educated -- Canisius High in Buffalo and John Carroll University in Cleveland -- Russert was also trained as a lawyer. He understood deeply the value of preparation and studied for each interview at length and in depth. Subjects on "Meet the Press" soon found themselves confronted with signature Russert de- vices -- video clips and highlighted quotations from their past. He understood the foundational value of initial questions and how to follow up effectively on his guests' responses.

It was an intensity new to Sunday morning television, one complemented by Russert's passion for politics. That inclination was particularly fortuitous and well-timed because over the life of Russert's tenure on "Meet the Press," America was becoming a more intensely partisan and politically preoccupied nation. Imbued with the Jesuit fondness for dialectic, Russert was able to take the opposite point of view from whatever partisan sat across the table from him and to carry through the interview with complete conviction.

In other hands, it was a technique that could -- and ultimately did become -- coarsely confrontational and mindlessly adversarial. Russert never fell into that sort of mannered trap because he was so essentially likable. He had a passion for politics in part because he was by nature an old-fashioned Irish pol, an instinctual listener with a keen sense that everybody has their interests -- a man with the right word in the right ear at the right time.

In that sense, the formative experience in Russert's life was the five years (1977 to 1982) he spent as chief of staff to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). In those days, Moynihan's office was a seething pool of intellectual contention -- intense Catholic activists who could quote Duns Scotus and Dorothy Day with equal facility; young Jewish intellectuals on their way to neo-conservatism; assorted ambitious academics and guys who just loved bare-knuckle New York politics. Russert presided over all with unshakable aplomb.