Hi and welcome to Russert Watch, a day late again this week with our abject apologies. Unfortunately my time for "Meet The Press" has been somewhat compromised by something far tastier: Eat The Press, HuffPo's new/month-old media page which I write and edit, and which has sadly left me with far less time for slavish devotion to Tim Russert's giant head. Fortunately there's been no shortage of coverage of yesterday's show, featuring a tag-team of MTP favorites Newt Gingrich and Joe Biden plus Robert Novak explaining the circumstances surrounding his publication of Valerie Plame's name and sounding kinda slippery in the process. At this point it's late for a full-throttle round-up but since this column is called "Russert Watch" I wanted to make a few comments on how the show itself was structured and how Russert himself performed.
- Starting the program with a news bulletin was genius. Immediately engaging, immediately imparting new information: Richard Engel in Beirut: "Everyone here says it depends on the United States and Syria — the U.S. to pressure Israel, Syria to call off Hezbollah" and news that the U.S. Embassy, representing an expat population of 25,000, was being flooded with calls "about six or seven a minute" plus Martin Fletcher in Haifa: "[D]on't forget that when Israel left--ended their occupation of south Lebanon in the year 2000, the deal was that the Lebanese Army would go in and police the border. Well, they never did that. Instead, Hezbollah moved in with all those rockets, and ever since then, about--for that last five years, Israel's been planning what to do, how to fight Hezbollah, how to destroy them. So this is, this is not a quick reaction to a kidnapping, it's the implementation of a plan Israel's been working on for five years with very specific targets." Just with these two reports we have a lot to chew on over the segment. Dense with info and not spin - it's a refreshing change.
GINGRICH: We're sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you're doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you'll get out of us is talk.
RUSSERT: You're talking about the Bush administration.
GINGRICH: I'm talking about the policies of the United States today.
RUSSERT: But that is such a condemnation of George W. Bush.
GINGRICH: Well, it's not a condemnation of George W. Bush. It's a statement that--look what we've done in the last six weeks. I mean, I think we are in a very serious crisis in this country.
(Note: Seattle Times political columnist David Postman has some interesting background on Gingrich's less-than-usual partisanship).
RUSSERT: Now, Newsday interviewed you a few weeks after your column ran, back in 2003, and quotes you as saying this, "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
NOVAK: That was a misstatement on my part. I--I'm--I've found I'm much better--I hope I'm not screwing up on this interview because I'm much better interviewing than I am giving interviews. They didn't give me the name. And of course it was not a "they," it was one person, which I later checked out with Mr. Rove. They, they--the Newsday article also paraphrased me as saying they came to me, I never said they came to me, because obviously I initiated the interview.
RUSSERT: Newsday stands by that story.
That's it for "Meet The Press" this week - apologies again for the lateness but please fill in the blanks in the comments section and definitely check out "Eat The Press" when you get a moment - feedback welcome at rachel@huffingtonpost.com. In the meantime, next week we will return at our regular bat-time to bring you the highs, lows, and spine-tingling in-betweens of "Meet The Press" because if it's Sunday — and sometimes Monday — it's Russert Watch. In the meantime, please no one let Newt Gingrich near the nuclear codes.