In the middle of a voice-over today, NBC’s Tim Russert slumped over and was gone.

The host of NBC’s “Meet The Press” was only 58 and expected to live forever. He had just moved his 80-year old father to a better nursing home.

The rumors had been buzzing around Washington D.C. for hours, until Tom Brokaw appeared on the Peacock network and confirmed the news. Every journalist that I’ve spoken with is shocked and slack-jawed. The broadcast lion seemed unstoppable; an irresistible force that would never meet its immovable object.

Others who knew him better will talk about personal grace and his unegoistical connections to ordinary people, about his love of his family, his church and his Buffalo Bills. I want to remind you of his public qualities.

He was two things that most Washington journalists are not: tough and fair.

He delighted in asking a question, letting the politician answer, and then putting the same politician’s past words on the screen. Once the trap sprung and the contradiction revealed, he would ask them to explain. That is how journalists are supposed to hold the powerful accountable. But it does not happen very often. Too many Washington hacks want to befriend their sources, not vex them. Thus they end up serving their sources instead of their readers. Yes, it makes life easier not to challenge political leaders, but the easy way is not the path to glory. Russert knew that. While friendly and charming in a distinctly Irish way, he raked every one over the coals. As a result, his Sunday show was not typical of the genre–what Joe Bob Briggs once called “brunch with the living dead”–but an arena of joyful combat.

And he was fair. While a partisan Democrat who had worked for an old-school Speaker of the House and bookish New York senator, he knew a fair response when he heard it. He would nod and move on, if he got a honest answer. That is why so many Republicans were willing to be grilled by the staunch Democrat. He was fair.

Tough but fair. There is no better epitaph for any journalist and Russert deserves no less.

Among some Catholics, there is a convention when someone passes out of this life and into the next. They say he has “gone home.” It means both that he is in a better place and that he is no longer around for us to talk to. So it is both happy and sad to say.

Much sooner than any of us would have liked or expected, Tim Russert has gone home.