All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

"He could give a woodpecker a headache."

— Sen. Maj. Leader Harry Reid at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the U.S. Institute of Peace, speaking about Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and his zealous support of the Institute.

(Submitted by our ever-observant White House Correspondent Mark Knoller. Thanks, Mark!)

Courtesy of White House correspondent Mark Knoller:

Commenting on the disruption in the airline industry because of the American Airlines flight cancellations, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters:

"Right now, we have a very safe airline transportation system. That is not by accident."

As presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain headed to the White House to recieve an endorsement from President Bush, a reporter asked spokeswoman Dana Perino whether the president thinks his endorsement would actually help Sen. McCain.

Some are calling her reply the Quote of the Day.

"Well, as the president has said before, when it comes to helping Republican candidates, he will campaign for them — or against them if they think that that will help."

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UPDATE: Per White House correspondent Mark Knoller, later in the day the president echoed Perino's sentiment: "If my showing up and endorsing him helps him, or if I'm against him and it helps him, either way, I want him to win."

My chat with Bob Schieffer last night got some props from the National Journal’s Hotline today – as its quote of the day.

The quote? "That phrase was invented here at CBS between 1962 and 1964."

The phrase? “Too close to call.”

At first it sounds like something out of a horse race – a literal one, not the political races in Iowa or New Hampshire. Curious if that was the case, I asked Couric & Co. to check it out. Sure enough, language guru William Safire had pondered the same thing in one of his “On Language” columns back in 1996. Safire writes:

Daniel Schorr of National Public Radio remembers the phrase from the early days of television, and directed me to Martin Plissner of CBS, a pioneer of electronic election coverage.

"That phrase was invented at CBS between 1962 and 1964," says Plissner with the confidence never shared by lexicographers. "During that period, instead of using the exit polling we have today, we used a model we had devised for predicting or calling elections based on certain reported-precinct results. That gave us a sample to which we could apply mathematical formulae to determine a call. When we had a situation in which all the votes were reported but there was no clear winner, we called that election too close to call."

A little poking around inside CBS News today revealed more: that Lou Harris, who worked for CBS News in the ‘60s, is said to have first uttered those words on air when reporting on a tight race for governor of Massachusetts in 1962.

Maybe it’ll come in handy this year.

"They did what they and every firefighter is prepared to do every day they put on their badge — to risk their life and, if necessary, give their life to make their community safer."

-- Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley, speaking to mourners at a service for the nine Charleston, S.C. firfighters who died earlier this week.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares." -- Henri Nouwen

"I had cancer last year. And having cancer, just having gone through this last year...was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I lost a mother to cancer when I was 17, same type -- same type, colon cancer. And what has happened in the field of cancer since then is a miracle...I feel every day is a blessing." -- Tony Snow, at his first White House briefing, May 16, 2007.

"I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work." -- Colin Powell, yesterday, speaking about the Iraq war on Face the Nation.

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“He was an original; not just an American original, but an original, period. He was a happy accident; one of the happiest this century has experienced; and judging by the way it's been behaving in spite of all Disney tried to tell it about laughter, love, children, puppies and sunrises, the century hardly deserved him. He probably did more to heal or at least to soothe troubled human spirits than all the psychiatrists in the world. There can't be many adults in the allegedly civilized parts of the globe who did not inhabit Disney's mind and imagination at least for a few hours and feel better for the visitation.” -- Eric Sevareid, on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, commenting on the death of Walt Disney on December 15, 1966, 40 years ago today.

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“If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” – George Washington, who died on this date at his Mount Vernon, Virginia home in 1799.

He was 67 years old.

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