I knew Tim Russert for over three decades. I liked and admired him very much.

I first met Tim when Pat Moynihan was running for the Senate in 1976, in New York’s Democratic primary. I was 23 years old, working for the campaign as deputy issues director. (This sounds more important than it was. Pat didn’t need much help on issues, and there were only two of us in the issues shop.) Tim, as I recall, was working in some capacity, formal or informal, for the Democratic boss in Buffalo, Joe Crangle, on the upstate campaign, and he came to the headquarters in Manhattan to coordinate with us. We hit it off in a casual way–and then, after Pat won the primary in September (by a little less than 10,000 votes out of close to a million cast), I went back to grad school to get my Ph.D., while Tim came to Washington with Pat after he won in November as a top aide.