There's A History Here: Russert Blindsided Hillary With Question About Bill's Affair Back In 2000; Hillary Camp Seethed
November 1, 2007 -- 1:31 PM EST // //
Since the Dem debate a few days ago a lot of people have understandably been taking shots at Tim Russert for his often small-minded "gotcha" questions and his constant references to Bill Clinton. Some Hillary backers are seething about Russert; indeed, in a conference call with big donors, Hillary pollster Mark Penn and other supporters repeatedly griped about Russert's approach, with one supporter saying that he "should be shot."
It's worth noting, however, that there's a long history here.
Russert has been trying to catch out Hillary with "gotcha" questions about Bill and other things for years now -- in fact, his efforts to do this date all the way back to Hillary's first Senate campaign in 2000. And then, as now, the Hillary folks were mighty pissed off with him. The bad blood goes way back.
Does anyone remember the then-notorious question about Bill's affair that Russert asked Hillary during a 2000 debate with GOP candidate Rick Lazio? The Hillary camp fumed about it afterwards and Bill even publicly went after Russert over it. It was the ultimate "gotcha" moment, really: Russert caught her off guard by playing some video of Hillary saying in a 1998 interview that she and her husband were totally shocked by the allegations of Bill's transgressions.
Then came the following exchange:
RUSSERT: Do you regret misleading the American people? And, secondly, in that same interview you said that those who were criticizing the president were part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Amongst those eventually criticizing the president were Joe Lieberman. Would you now apologize for branding people as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy?The Hillary camp seethed afterwards about Russert's ambush, he took a pounding for it from the Columbia Journalism Review, and Bill even took a shot at Russert at a fundraiser, saying that the debate had been "2-on-1 half the time," meaning that Russert and Lazio had ganged up on Hillary. In other words, Russert played the "gotcha" game with Billary, the Hillary camp hit back at Russert, and then Hillary's advisers moved to spin his gotcha into a positive by arguing that the men had piled on victimized Hillary and that she'd valiantly fought back. Exactly what happened this time.CLINTON: Well you know Tim, that was a very, a very painful time for me, for my family and for our country. It is something that I regret deeply that anyone had to go through. And I wish that we all could look at it from the perspective of history but we can't yet. We're going to have to wait until those books are written.
But from my perspective, you know, I'm very hopeful that we can go forward in a united way. That certainly is what I've tried to do. And I've tried to be as forthcoming as I could given the circumstances that I faced. Obviously I didn't mislead anyone. I didn't know the truth. And there's a great deal of pain associated with that and my husband has certainly acknowledged that and made it clear that he did mislead the country as well as his family.
The point here is that Russert has been doing this for a long time now, and he's only been rewarded for it by his Beltway peers with more power and status. The networks live and die to create buzz; gotcha moments create that buzz; and hence those who create gotcha moments flourish. Sure, Creeping Russertism means the political process remains mired in inanity and self-parody and our discourse remains comfortably dumb. But who cares? People talk about Russert's gotchas at D.C. cocktail parties, and that's what really matters. It happened seven years ago; it happened again a few days ago; and it'll happen again in seven years.
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