There really isn’t a shorter Bill Kristol this week since he devotes his column to the hagiography of Tim Russert and it’s really hard to fuck up a tribute based upon your own remembrances. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be pie.

This part was funny, though:

I met Tim in the summer of 1976 during Pat Moynihan’s primary election campaign for the Senate. Tim had just graduated from law school, and was dispatched by the Democratic boss of Buffalo, Joe Crangle, to see what was going on at Moynihan campaign headquarters in Manhattan.

Tim showed up one day, looked around, and took a few of us out for a beer. It took me about two minutes of conversation to realize that Tim was far savvier about politics — especially New York Democratic politics — than we at headquarters were, but he was polite and pretended to listen to our observations. In fact, as Tim told me later, he quickly concluded that most of us had no idea what we were doing — which was certainly the case.

Some things never change…