Tom McDermott: America’s Pundit

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: May 6, 2008

As the political nation waits for election results from Indiana, who knew that Tom McDermott would be the go-to pundit of election night?

McDermott, mayor of Hammond, Ind., and a Clinton supporter, just spent two minutes ticking off his recollection of machine vote tallies from cities in northern and central Lake County, which—STILL—hasn’t reported its returns.

You couldn’t see them, but the pundits at CNN’s desk were no doubt scribbling and scrawling his every word: Maryville ... Hammond ... Crown Point ... and the numbers as he remembered them.

He’s delivering the news on which the entire political waits, and he’s doing it in fits and starts as it comes to him.

Tom McDermott: Mayor by day, America’s most powerful pundit by night.

If political success is all about name ID, McDermott has a bright career ahead: He’s getting the kind of “earned media”—“earned” meaning “free”—that would break most campaigns.