"He always asked the question we hoped he wouldn't"

The Hotline ran a moving tribute to Tim Russert today, rounding up recollections and reflections from all corners of this city (including the above, from Mitch McConnell, which I imagine to be the kind of high praise the guy would have loved.)

I'm struck by the timing of this loss, right before Father's Day - of a man so devoted and so frequently given to mentioning his own family that my first thought was of Big Russ and of Russert's son my age. And so closely associated in my mind with my own father that my second thought was whether Dad had heard the news.

If it was Sunday, it was in fact Meet the Press in my house, as it had been for my dad and his dad. By college, it was just me watching - my father had grown exhausted, he said, with Russert's "gotcha" line of questioning- but for awhile it was a small ritual shared between the two of us while the other half of the family slept. And while Russert's style could be tedious at times (cue his eye-roll-inducing insistence that Clinton properly pronounce Dmitry Medvedev's last name at an April Democratic debate), I can no more imagine this 2008 election without his pointed interrogations than I could without my dad's grousing about Obama's anticipated tax-and-spendism.

And here's a confession that I'd wager isn't unique among the more ambitious of our generation - for as long as I've been envisioning my Senate campaign (and I am now, for the record, in my second term of that daydream), whenever I imagined myself making compelling arguments and graceful rebuttals on the Sunday morning talk programs, it was always, but always, Tim Russert on the other side of the table.

No small thing to say that he will be missed.