Consider my words eaten. I got through about a third of the transcript and decided that you were right. It cannot be said that Russert was "warm and fuzzy" with him at all. He was actually pretty tough. No doubt it will be used as evidence of "conservative media bias" by the moonbats, but I think you're quite correct about the motivation behind it.
Qwinn
On the other hand, they needed to make him look ineffective in order to get him out, without having a complete melt-down, which would have made all the Rats look nutty (not that they aren't, but the public doesn't know it).
I will be interested to see if there is a lot of talk about how "disappointing" Dean's appearance was.