With the news of Tim Russert's death today, there has been much talk about how he put politicians on the spot during interviews.

One such occasion was in May 2002, when Russert interviewed then-U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

By some accounts, Edwards did not fare well. Conservative columnist Robert Novak said at the time that Edwards "withered under Tim Russert's grilling."

It was more than a year before Edwards appeared again on the show - some said it was because he received such poor reviews the first time. But Edwards, by most accounts, fared better the second time around.

David Axelrod, Edwards' media strategist at the time, said Edwards' second interview with Russert was "a benchmark of his evolution as a candidate."

The transcript of the 2002 interview after the jump.

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Hillary Clinton's campaign really ended in North Carolina.

The post-mortems of the former Democratic presidential candidate's campaign pretty much agree on this point, saying that her last chance to turn the primary around were on May 6.

The New York Times adds some details about divisions between Clinton adviser Mark Penn and pollster Geoff Garin about how winnable the state was:

North Carolina was the question mark. Mr. Clinton, unwilling to give up on his native South, believed they could whittle down her double-digit deficit and insisted on spending more time there. Mr. Garin took polls and reported back in an April 25 e-mail message that “we are on track to narrow this to single digits.” Mr. Penn argued it was not possible and took his own shadow poll to prove his point.

The paper says Clinton aides essentially realized the race was over when they saw Tim Russert on MSNBC say that she did not get a "game-changer" that she wanted.

Hillary Clinton's campaign really ended in North Carolina.

In a post-mortem in the Washington Post today, an unnamed Clinton adviser says that Barack Obama's 15-point win here sealed her fate:

Whatever slim hopes Clinton had for an improbable comeback died with the disappointing results in the last two big primaries of the campaign -- a narrower-than-hoped-for victory in Indiana and a double-digit loss in North Carolina -- and the commentary that accompanied them. When NBC's Tim Russert flatly declared the Democratic race over around midnight, one adviser recalled, "the air came out of the room."

The piece notes that Clinton soon pulled her negative ads and stopped criticizing Obama, and there was "a sense of resignation within the campaign."