If it's Sunday, it's time to look down as I point both fingers toward the camera

<
TR: Senator, back in 1965, you wrote that you wanted to be a jet pilot. Now you say you want to be president. What should the American people believe?

Sen: TR, I was 6, and that seemed pretty cool at the time. I later found my talents more suited to helping people and bringing about change.

TR: But you did write that.

Sen: Yes, I did.

TR: So how do we know that, in the middle of your presidency, you won't just get up one day and decide to be a wedding planner or an astrologer? How can the American people trust that that won't happen?

Sen: #%$^%*(#!
>

I've never been much for getting up on Sunday and watching the political interview shows, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and whatever they call it on ABC. It's not that I have been uninterested in current events, or in being an informed voter, but I felt that my keeping up with the daily newspaper and a news magazine was probably sufficient.

However, an odd consequence of the disappointing George W. Bush presidency has been my taking a greater interest is such matters. Additionally, as I get older, I become more aware of how decisions today really do affect the future, and how a lot of what we take for granted in this country is far more precarious than is commonly believed.

So the past year or so I've been making more of an effort to be well-informed. Reading blogs (and starting my own) has forced me to think more about what I believe, and what some of the well-held myths are.

A part of that strategy has been the inclusion, most Sundays, of Meet the Press. This venerable institution is considered by many to be the most news-worthy, so it was the place for me to start. I began watching with very few pre-conceived notions; Tim Russert was the guy with the little whiteboard on election night, and that was pretty much the sum total of my feeling.

As I watched over several weeks and months, I became ever more disquieted by what I saw, especially as we have endured this long presidential campaign. Russert would get some major figures in the chair, and admirably keep them there for good portions of the hour, but he'd never get around to issues that I felt were important. In particular, the economy rarely took up much time, lost in a discussion of Iraq or illegal immigration or whatever was hot to discuss that particular week.

Then it dawned on me that the reason that, in 40 minutes or so of discussion, the conversation never touched on the economy, on America's role in the world, on a future that looks increasingly bleak for increasing numbers of Americans, was that Russert was belaboring minor points past all value. It wasn't that he would discuss Iraq with, say, John McCain, which might lead to a larger discussion as to how the U.S. should engage with the world - it was that he would spend five or more minutes on comparing what Sen. McCain said in 1982 to what he said yesterday.

Of course, if you're more tuned in to Tim Russert or the way in which he's perceived, you already know all this. It turns out that even a quick trip around the net tells you that many are bothered by Tim's "gotcha" questions, that he is well known for his inability to focus on anything other than what might make news among the pundit class. And Matt Yglesias expresses it pretty well in a Washington Monthly article, The Unbearable Inanity of Tim Russert . Not much more I can add.