TVNewser’s Gail Shister interviews NBC’s newly minted chief White House correspondent on the occasion of his promotion. “It came out of left field,” Chuck Todd told her of the correspondent position. “It’s not a job I aspired to, and I don’t mean it negatively. There were 500 different ways I thought they could go.

“I never viewed myself as a correspondent,” Todd said. “I didn’t even view myself as a TV guy.”

Todd also discusses The Goatee:

Now, Todd accepts that he’s a real TV guy…”as long as they don’t make me shave the beard. I’m truly going to have a no-cut contract.”

Without his whiskers, “I’d just be another pasty white guy,” he says. “I’m very thankful that my friend Mr. Capus [NBC News chief Steve Capus] enjoys facial hair on his own chin.”