“Tim, we miss you…”

Last night, there were plenty of people in tears when Barack Obama was elected our next President. But I wasn’t one of them…

That is until I heard Luke Russert’s report on the youth vote. When he launched into his final comments, it was all there. The mannerisms, the pace of speech, the choice of words. In that moment, his father, Tim Russert, was with us again and I couldn’t help but tear up.

Last night had to be a tough one for the people of NBC News, but they handled it beautifully, never forgetting Tim and how much we all missed him last night.

I can hear him saying now, “Brian, as Big Russ always says, ‘What a country!’”…

Several times throughout the night we saw clips of Tim’s most famous moment when he held up the dry erase board in 2000 and declared “Florida, Florida, Florida.” Brian Williams showed off a board that Tim autographed for Jeff Zucker (the head honcho of NBC Universal). And everyone referred to him often throughout the night, knowing how much he would have loved such a historic moment.

Chuck Todd did a great job of breaking it all down last night, but I have to believe it was a role he never wanted. He would have been much happier over on MSNBC letting Tim crunch the numbers on his dry erase board at NBC.

And no offense to Chuck, but I think we all would have been much happier with that…

During Tim’s memorial service, Tom Brokaw promised to toast Tim at the end of Election Night. And during the broadcast, Tom reiterated that promise. I can only imagine how emotional it was…

At the end of their broadcast, Brian simply said, “Tim, we miss you. We were thinking of you all night.”

I couldn’t have said it any better, so I won’t even try…

Photos Credit: Virginia Sherwood/NBC