Sitting in RFK stadium in Washington, D.C., one evening in 2006, I was watching the Philadelphia Phillies lose to the lowly Washington Nationals when I spied Tim Russert going to get a beer.
I had to say hello to my Sunday-morning hero, so I hustled to the concession stand for a soda.
Russert approached, hulking in an orange golf shirt. "Keep grillin' those S.O.B.s," a passing man yelled as Russert stepped into line behind me. He laughed while grabbing a bag of peanuts. I introduced myself as "Bob Costa, a big fan from Notre Dame."
"Notre Dame?" said Russert, smiling. "Didn't we just beat you guys two years ago?" Yes, the Fighting Irish football team had been clobbered in 2004 by Boston College, where his son Luke was attending college.
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Mr. Russert signs off after an interview with Sen. John McCain during a taping of "Meet the Press" on Jan. 27, 2008.
I told him I was interning at ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "Why isn't an Irish kid like you working for us?" he asked while tipping the beer guy. "Keep at it," he went on. "You guys over there at ABC are giving us a real run for our money."
At the time, "Meet the Press" led "This Week" by a few million viewers. But Russert's graciousness made me feel for the first time that maybe this journalism thing my mother warned me against falling in love with was not far-fetched after all.
I'd first met Russert that June, while interning for PBS's "Charlie Rose" in New York. He had come to Mr. Rose's oak table to talk about his favorite subject outside politics, his dad, and the release of his book, "Wisdom of Our Fathers." My important duties that day were to get Russert coffee and walk him out of the Bloomberg building after the taping. I told him I'd love to work on "Meet the Press."
"You're being too nice," he said at the time, laughing. "Guys like you should want to host the show." More seriously, he added, "Look, you just have to get out there and do it." Russert took in the swarm of people on Lexington Avenue and asked "Where are you from, son?"
"Bucks County, Pennsylvania," I said. Russert gestured to the people rushing by. "All of these folks," he said, "don't let them intimidate you. When I first started working for Pat Moynihan, I thought all of these Ivy League guys were ahead of me, that I could never catch up. Then Senator Moynihan took me aside one day, when I told him I didn't think I had it in me to compete in the big leagues, and he said, 'Tim, what they know, you can learn. What you know, they'll never understand.'"
Russert stopped by Notre Dame this April, a month before my graduation, to give the Red Smith Lecture in Journalism. He talked about the need to prepare for every interview. "It is essential that I do what I didn't do when I was in college," he said. "I had been taught that if I read my lesson before class, show up in class on time, review my notes after class, then the exam would be easy. They were right. I did not do that, but it is what I do now, each and every day."
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are often credited for inspiring interest in politics among young Americans. For me, it was Tim Russert. He was an icon with wit and gravitas, who thought that politics should be more than fodder for a hip joke or a clever aside. It was about ideas and choices that mattered.
Russert saw politics as a vital and enjoyable discourse on America's future – a future to be greeted with vigor, not cynicism. Debate livened Russert's show, and he told us at Notre Dame to challenge ourselves to think critically about what we saw and read. "It is not enough to confirm your political views by only accessing and reading outfits that reinforce your views but do not challenge them," he said.
Russert will be remembered for his remarkable career. But I'll remember him as the famous journalist who gave counsel to an intern, and who told me to "get out there and do it."
Mr. Costa is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal's editorial page.
