Tim Russert Dies at 58

I'm truly shocked and saddened by this news. Not just because he was so young, or because he died of a disease that has plagued my own father for so long, but because Tim Russert has played a role in my life since I was a kid. I can't believe he won't be there Sunday morning. I've been watching Meet the Press since I was 10 or 12 years old. If it's Sunday....

I've had a weird and obsessive interest in politics from a young age, and a big part of that was the soothing regularity of Russert's Sunday morning interviews. It's not an accident that I wound up living in D.C. and interning on Capital Hill. I watched Russert and I watched CNN's Inside Politics, and I knew this is where I needed to be.

I'm devastated that he won't have the chance to participate in the upcoming election. I'm certain he shared my excitement, and we are all poorer to have lost his commentary and reporting on such an historic moment in American political history. No one can replace him, regardless of what happens to Meet the Press. It's like the world's biggest Red Sox fan dying right before the Sox won the World Series. It just isn't fair.

God bless him. 1950 - 2008. Far too soon.