It happens every year…a contaminated food product gets pulled from the supermarket shelves, and then anything remotely similar to the item in question becomes unsellable for the next month. Last year it was the great spinach scare; this year it’s tomatoes…specifically, an outbreak of salmonella in the American southwest that has tainted a few of the varieties available in supermarkets. Rather than follow the letter of the news reports and shop for unaffected tomatoes, the hysteria-prone American consumer tends to reduce such news to the shortest possible sound bite—ALL TOMATOES ARE BAD. In response, several fast-food chains hastily removed all tomato products from their menus, and stores scrambled to put up signs (vainly) trying to explain the situation. But there is a silver lining in all of this...

Just in case we needed any more incentive to shop for locally-raised produce, our Berkshire and Columbia County farmers are starting to bring the first of their delicious (and untainted) love apples to market.

Speaking of inedible produce, how about some sour grapes? Hillary has lost, and she is pissed. Now it’s payback time.

During the Watergate drama of 1972-74, it was revealed that the Nixon Administration maintained a list of its perceived enemies, a slice of citizenry ranging from Democratic senators and congressmen to left-leaning journalists to New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. (Of all of those thus honored, this last entry puzzles me the most; Namath’s Jets never faced Nixon’s beloved Redskins until two days before his landslide re-election in 1972, and the Jets lost that game 35-17.)

Now we are reliably told that the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, diligently keep an up-to-date enemies list as well, a roster of former allies, employees, and beneficiaries of their good graces during Bill’s presidency who have defected to Barack Obama this year. Odd, isn’t it? Wouldn’t this be the very same Hillary Clinton who at the age of 27 worked as a staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate hearings? Well, maybe it’s not so strange after all—her boss at the time, Jerry Zeifman, now claims that he fired her from that job for dishonesty and unethical conduct (hiding records, knowingly filing false briefs, etc.).

But I still find delicious irony in Hillary waxing so Nixonian, as if the huntress has over the intervening decades become indistinguishable from her erstwhile prey. Maybe…just maybe, all of those ex-Clintonites on their list have fled to the Obama camp in order to get away from that sort of cynical, spiteful stuff. I have yet to be fully convinced of Barack Obama’s qualifications as a prospective Commander-in-Chief other than his obvious intelligence and self-evident eloquence, but I give him credit for convincingly demonstrating a refreshing optimism, naïve perhaps though it may be. In retrospect it is this trait that most clearly distinguishes him from Hillary.

A year ago, Hillary Clinton was the prohibitive favorite to seize the White House. Right-wing nut though I’m accused of being, she was my personal choice, and I had said at the time that Barack Obama was the REPUBLICANS’ best and only hope. Had Hillary endured the primaries largely unopposed, she might well have waltzed into the Presidency. But Obama’s shockingly stiff challenge to her front-runner status right from the get-go has served like shots of Russian vodka to melt her carefully crafted façade and expose her dark side. She lost me for good with her Bosnian sniper fire mis-recollection and then her chilling invocation of the memory of RFK’s June 1968 assassination as a factor in her not resigning from the race just yet.

And so now we are left with Barack Obama and John McCain…good and decent men both, but very, very different. I cannot help but observe that Ted Kennedy, in assembling the best possible medical team for his cancer treatment, didn’t select a neurosurgeon who had never done it before but would bring “fresh, new ideas” to the operating room. Experience counts for something. On the other hand, I suspect—as many Washington insiders supposedly do—that Senator McCain might well have left some of his marbles in the Hanoi Hilton way back when.

I am optimistic that the rigors and debates of the general election will be as effective in revealing the true character of each candidate as was the democratic primary process. Unfortunately, we will be without the services of Timothy John "Tim" Russert, Jr., “Meet The Press” host, occasional debate moderator, and perhaps the ablest election journalist among his generation of the American press corps. Russert collapsed at his NBC desk on the afternoon of Friday, June 13, and died a short while later at a Washington hospital. He was five weeks shy of his fifty-ninth
birthday.

NBC colleague Tom Brokaw released the news of Russert’s death at 3:40 p.m., "I think I can invoke personal privilege and say this news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice," said Brokaw. "He will be missed as he was loved—greatly."

Praise from all over the journalistic map streamed in, from Walter Cronkite to Rush Limbaugh. The candidates chimed in as well—Senator McCain hailed Russert as the pre-eminent journalist of his generation, while Senator Obama asserted that "There wasn't a better interviewer in television."

No wonder Obama liked him; even the great Tim Russert, it seems, wasn’t completely immune to Obama-mania. As the moderator of the democratic candidates’ debate in Philadelphia last October 30th, Russert made Hillary Clinton squirm with a series of tough questions while tossing Senator Obama such softballs as “The three astronauts of Apollo 11 who went to the moon back in 1969, all said that they believe there is life beyond Earth. Do you agree?”

Like many people, I shall remember Tim Russert best for his 2000 election night coverage, smiling with obvious relish as he scribbled the possible Electoral College possibilities on his U.S. map marker board. “Florida,” Russert repeated several times. “It’ll all come down to Florida.” Likewise, in 2004, Russert correctly identified Ohio as the key battleground state upon which the election would turn. And this year? Although he’ll be with us in spirit only, Russert has already named New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada as crucial states. "If Democrats can win three of those four,” Russert recently claimed, “they can lose Ohio and Florida, and (still) win the presidency.” Whoever wins which states, it will be a sad election night without Tim Russert explaining it to us.

Amidst all of the praise for Russert that has poured in, “being well-prepared for his interviews” has been a consistent refrain. A few days before he died, Russert, a lifelong devout Catholic, managed to finagle an audience with Pope Benedict XVI while vacationing in Italy…unwittingly, perhaps, in preparation for his greatest interview of all.