Meet the Speaker

On the night of the 2000 Presidential Election, NBC News anchor Tim Russert, like any good teacher, presented his material to the people in terms they could understand.

Armed with nothing but a dry-erase marker and two whiteboards, Russert staged several electoral-vote scenarios for his NBC-viewing “students,” in an attempt to illustrate just why the 43rd president would be determined by Florida’s 27 votes in the Electoral College.

Today, in Tercentenary Theatre, the Harvard Class of 2005 can also expect to learn a lesson or two from Russert, who will takes the stage as Class Day Speaker.

Russert already has some advice he would like to pass along to what he considers to be a politically apathetic generation.

“It’s my sense that knowing and understanding [the importance of Washington, D.C.] should motivate people [to learn about politics], to have their views heard and have their views adopted,” he told The Crimson. “But it’s a free country, and they can stay on their sidelines if they want. But it’s more difficult for them to take complain about Washington.”

A WORK ETHIC FOR THE TOP

Russert is a Buffalo, New York, native—but, as Managing Editor and Moderator of Meet the Press and a political analyst for NBC Nightly News and the Today show, he’s no stranger to Washington politics.

In fact, in 1976 he landed a job on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s campaign in his bid for the U.S. Senate seat from New York. The Catholic son of a sanitation worker and a truck driver, Russert had already worked his way through John Carroll University and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law as a sometime cab driver and pizza man.

And, before heading to NBC news, Russert got an inside view into the executive and legislative branches of government working as “counselor in the New York Governor’s office in Albany in 1983 and 1984 and a special counsel in the United States Senate from 1977 to 1982,” according to the NBC website.

Today, Russert credits his political experience for providing him with the insight to formulate the incisive questions that typify his approach on Meet the Press.

“The distinct advantage I have, I know what goes on inside the closed doors journalists stand outside of,” Russert told the Columbia Journalism review in 1992. “When I’m interviewing someone, I know what exercise they’ve gone through, what points they’re trying to make, what questions they’re trying to avoid.”

Said to consult seven newspapers daily, Russert has unnerved more than a few well-known guests on his show.

In talking to The Crimson, Russert recalls his conversations with Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton as particularly exciting, since “anything that is said can reverberate.”

Also “memorable,” he says, was his interview with Vice President Dick Cheney at Camp David three days after September 11—when the second-in-command assured Russert and the rest of America that the terrorists would be brought to justice.

But, he says, “Perhaps the feistiest [interviewee] was Ross Perot in 1992.” Just days after the interview—during which Perot momentarily had Russert in a good-natured headlock— Perot dropped out of the presidential race.

NO BACKING DOWN

The steely Russert says he has never let his respect for an office dissuade him from asking a tough question.

Indeed, Russert says he intentionally creates conflict on his show to provoke thoughtful answers from his guest.

“I don’t think you have to be rude or obnoxious. You can ask pointed, difficult questions,” he tells The Crimson.

But while Russert may be civil, he says he has no patience for the politically ignorant who complain passively about the state of country.

“The fact, is whether people like it or not, or whether people participate in it or not, what happens in Washington has a profound effect in their lives—whether it be the War in Iraq, Health Care, AIDS, poverty around the world. Those decisions are made in Washington.”

On his own show, Russert makes no apologies for questions that might put his guests in a tough spot.

“I don’t think presidents, senators, or governors can make difficult decisions if they aren’t asked difficult questions,” he says. “These are complicated issue...but only if they think through the complicated issues can they formulate a position.”

NBC Universal Television Group President A. Jeffrey Zucker ’86, for one, says he respects Russert all the more for his commitment to making no distinction between the powerful and the barely known.

“He’s always been a consummate professional who is enmeshed in the political fabric of this country—but who never ever forgets where he came from—and can talk to the president and a factory worker at the same time with the same charm and same skill,” Zucker says.

SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE

Russert can draw from a deep arsenal of experience in composing his Class Day Speech.

Although, in his New York Times best seller, “Big Russ & Me,” he displays an affectionate humor in a collection of personal memoirs about his relationship with his father, Russert has already stated that the wit in his Class Day speech this year “won’t quite be Ali G.”

Still, the 55-year-old journalist-lawyer promises, “I have a sense that there should be some humor, but also something that will be memorable and helpful as people leave college and fly and head off in different directions.”

“The seniors couldn’t have a better speaker than [Russert], from whom I’m sure they’ll glean both practical experience from and fantastic anecdotes,” says Zucker, noting that he himself has sat through a fair share of Class Day speeches.

Referring to past speakers, Russert warns that expectations should be carefully set.

As he says, “I understand the legacy that precedes me...[and] I’m the first to acknowledge that I’m not Ali G. or Mother Teresa.”

—Staff writer Vinita M. Alexander can be reached at valexand@fas.harvard.edu.