Well, there is a time when Sunday morning TV belonged to my friend Tim Russer.

If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.

The line between the press and political operatives has been crossed countless times in both directions.

Louis Howe was an Albany reporter, a chain smoker, who believed that the freshman state senator of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

was destined for bigger things.

Lewis Howe became not just Senator Roosevelt's re-election campaign manager, but the manager

of Franklin Roosevelt's political career.

There would have been no Governor Roosevelt. There would have been no President Roosevelt without Lewis Howe.

Tim Russert got his start in politics the same way I did.

Working for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

And with us now a man who's Senate staff, I served on a decade and a half ago,

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senior senator from New York.

Senator, welcome. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senior senator from New York.

Senator welcome.

Now I'm biased, but I think Tim was the best moderator of Meet the Press or any

Sunday show ever. No one ever questioned Tim Russert's fairness and

objectivity even when he was interviewing his former boss.

And I have a feeling Tim Russert would have been cheering for his former protege and friend Chuck Todd yesterday. After meet the press, uh, meet the press interview of the former Republican Party chair,

Rana McDaniel, who was hired as a paid contributor at NBC News last week.

I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation

because I don't know what to believe.

She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.

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