Missing Tim Russert

My Sunday morning's rituals include talking to Vizag around 7 AM, watching Joel Olsteen's sermon at 8 AM, and watching Meet the Press at 10 AM, religiously. I am deeply saddened by Tim Russert's absence on Meet the Press, and am not that enthusiastic about this show any more.

Here is one of my fond memories of Tim Russert, from the recent past. For a while, I watched 2008 Democrat primaries closely. I was particularly impressed by Tim Russert's analysis of the situation (and his articulation) shortly after North Carolina and Indiana primaries, and his prediction with certainty. At that time, I was flipping channels between NBC and CNN for news analysis, while the election results were pouring in.

On one side, it was John King on CNN (nothing against him, he was trying) with his fancy wall-sized flat screen with iPhone kind of finger-operated scroll, zoom, and pan features. He was throwing all kinds of numbers, statistics, and what-if scenarios at the audience. It was not clear what to make of all that information. At that time, Tim Russert showed up on NBC with his signature white board, and emphatically said that it was over for Clinton*! What a class! Of course, Who can forget Florida, Florida, Florida in 2000!?



We can gain knowledge with effort. But to acquire wisdom, we need passion as an ingredient. Tim's wisdom in political analysis reminded me of an article on Enrico Fermi that I read in Reader's Digest a long time ago.

At twenty-nine minutes past five, on a Monday morning in July of 1945, the world's first atom bomb exploded in the desert sixty miles northwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Forty seconds later, the blast's shock wave reached the base camp, where scientists stood in stunned contemplation of the historic spectacle. The first person to stir was the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, who was on hand to witness the culmination of a project he had helped begin.

Before the bomb detonated, Fermi had torn a sheet of notebook paper into small bits. Then, as he felt the first quiver of the shock wave spreading outward through the still air, he released the shreds above his head. They fluttered down and away from the mushroom cloud growing on the horizon, landing about two and a half yards behind him. After a brief mental calculation, Fermi announced that the bomb's energy had been equivalent to that produced by ten thousand tons of TNT. Sophisticated instruments also were at the site, and analyses of their readings of the shock wave's velocity and pressure, an exercise that took several weeks to complete, confirmed Fermi's instant estimate.

As I read somewhere, "the one who knows How? will get the job. The one who knows Why? will be his boss!"

* probably with pleasure, as (in my opinion), his bias against Hillary Clinton (like mine!) was obvious from his earlier shows.