Last Sunday, after I preached about Tim Russert in my homily, several people came up to me after mass to tell me how much he meant to them. One woman took my hand and explained,”When I heard the news,” she said, “I just cried. It just made me so sad.” An older man made a point of telling me, “He was a good guy,” and then he added, “even if he was a Democrat.” I laughed and reassured him that even Democrats can get into heaven.

What was it about Russert that struck such a nerve? Eugene Robinson, I think, finds some answers in this column from the Washington Post:

Tim Russert knew he was a big deal — he had a healthy ego and an accurate sense of his accomplishments. But I’m confident that he would be stunned at the magnitude of the reaction to his death, especially among people who never met him. There’s a sense that something more than the man has been lost.

I’ve appeared occasionally on “Meet the Press,” and this year I often worked with Russert on MSNBC’s election coverage. Since last Friday, when Russert suffered a heart attack while preparing for Sunday’s show, I’ve been stopped a number of times by people I don’t know — in the street, in the supermarket, at a restaurant — who extended condolences as if a member of my own family had passed away. I’ve gotten e-mails from both friends and strangers saying they were touched by Russert’s passing in a way that surprised them.

The temptation is to chalk this up to Russert’s great skill as a broadcaster — effortlessly projecting his personality through the screen. As friends, colleagues and the subjects (or victims) of his interviews have attested, he was a great guy. At this point, after a weekend of nonstop tributes, it would be self-indulgent for me to add my own litany of personal recollections and unadulterated hosannas. Suffice it to say that he deserved it all.

But why such a huge reaction? I think it’s not just because of who Russert was, but also because of the role he carved out for himself as a kind of ombudsman — the mediator not only of a television show but of a weekly dialogue between the public and the political establishment.
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In an age of postmodern irony, there was nothing remotely postmodern or ironic about Russert — or for that matter about his television show. His “Meet the Press” presented the nation’s political discourse as we would like it to be: sober yet good-natured, always civil, scrupulously informed. The show flattered guests and their subject matter by taking them seriously and, by extension, flattered the millions of viewers who reliably tuned in every Sunday morning by taking them seriously as well.

Much has been made of Russert’s “everyman” persona — the blue-collar kid from Buffalo who never lost sight of his roots. It’s true that Russert didn’t put on airs, but he never pretended to be a regular guy and I doubt many people saw him that way. In fact, he was the insider’s insider, with connections and access — and also wealth and influence — that no one would remotely consider ordinary. If there is a Washington “bubble,” Russert lived at its center.

What he did so effectively was confront his fellow insiders with the questions and concerns of those living outside. This was not a unique gift — other great journalists do the same thing. But Russert did it so well, and gradually aggregated such a large audience, that he came to occupy a unique position in the nation’s political life.

There’s much more at the WaPo link. Meantime, there’s also this wonderful dissection of Russert’s life of faith, from Jon Meachem at Newsweek:

In a capital that can seem soulless and even godless, Russert was a man of faith, cheerfully professing the civic virtues of post-World War II America. He loved his neighbor, honored his parents and cherished his country. The son of working-class south Buffalo, N.Y., Russert moved among popes and presidents with an easy grace, and he was sweetly grateful for, and a little amazed at, his success. He was devoted to his wife, the writer Maureen Orth, and to his son, Luke, who just graduated from Boston College.

It is not sentimental to say that Russert’s rise and reign can be best understood in the context of his religion, for his religion was not just a part of his life but his whole life, and his story is a common one for ethnic Roman Catholics of his generation.

To be a certain kind of Catholic in America in the years between, say, the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the election of Richard Nixon (to date it in a way Russert would have liked) was to be immersed not only in a faith but in a consuming culture. Protestants talked about “going to church.” Catholics spoke of “the Church.” Life revolved around sacraments and the schools, priests and nuns. One Christmas season I asked Russert how much of his childhood had resembled the movie “Going My Way.” “Just about all of it,” he replied.

Growing up on Kirkwood Drive in Buffalo, “Timmy” Russert attended mass at St. Bonaventure’s, where he also went to school. “In the altar-boy world, he was the No. 1 server,” recalled Patrick J. Griffin, a neighbor. “They always gave Timmy the prime mass. He got the 10 o’clock mass on a Sunday; we got the 6 o’clock mass on a Sunday. He was a cute little fellow, blond hair and blue eyes, and everybody liked him.”

There were crosses above the Russert kids’ beds, a portrait of Jesus and his Sacred Heart on the wall and a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the backyard; in May, the month of Mary, the family lit a candle every day. There was no meat on Fridays, and if someone lost something, Mrs. Russert prayed to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron of lost things. On Good Friday they re-enacted the Stations of the Cross. (“I remember, in seventh grade, kneeling in church from noon to three as a form of sacrifice,” Russert recalled in his memoir, “Big Russ & Me.” “It wasn’t easy.”) In second grade came first communion and the perils of the confessional. The priest’s face was hidden by a screen, and Russert did his homework even then. “We always prepared for confession by thinking of various sins we might have committed,” he recalled, “such as being mean to your sister or the always available wildcard sin of ‘impure thoughts’.” The rhythms and rituals of the church—communion, confession, absolution, catechism—were not exotic to Russert; they were givens, part of the air he breathed.

Read the rest. You’ll be glad you did.

Meantime, the USCCB has released a statement praising Russert’s faith — which, the Catholic News Service notes, may be one of the few times in recent memory the bishops have done such a thing for a Catholic layman.

And — though we’ve now passed Father’s Day — there’s this nice tribute over at Busted Halo from Mike Hayes.