All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Harry Smith is co-anchor of The Early Show. This piece appeared on the CBS Evening News.

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Man did Tim Russert love politics.

He ate it, lived it and breathed it. His knowledge of it was organic, internal and genetic. It showed in his every broadcast, in his every debate appearance.

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Tim Russert was so many different things.

He was a big teddy bear of a guy. But he was also a pit bull of an interviewer. He always held people’s feet to the fire, often using their past words with great effect to reveal a flip-flop or hypocrisy. While he was incredibly tenacious, he always did it with great humanity and respect.

He was passionate about the political process and was, in many ways, the navigator-in-chief for so many people. It was because he was so knowledgeable that he made politics accessible to millions.

Tim gave me my first network break. I was a local reporter at WRC in Washington, which shares a building with the NBC Washington bureau. Tim asked me to come to his office one day and told me he admired my work, particularly my coverage of Marion Barry, who was then the mayor of Washington. He liked my “scrappiness,” and asked if I was interested in becoming the deputy Pentagon correspondent. Tim was one of the nicest, most generous colleagues I ever had the pleasure of working with.

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