He was almost like a character out of The Front Page.  He loved newspapers, he loved reporting and most of the time, he loved politics.  In 2000 though he stopped writing his nationally syndicated column because he was fed up with what our political system had become. He wrote a book about it, Fat Man Fed Up: How American Politics Went Bad.In July of 2004, Jack Germond and I talked, as we had many times before, about the state of politics and how it was so disappointing to him.  He pulled no punches as he talked about things that would only get worse during his final eight years.  They don't make reporters like Jack Germond anymore.  Here is part of our conversation from July of 2004: