Rachel Maddow can't dance. The shortcoming was revealed during coverage of the Democratic National Convention. As Stevie Wonder revved up the Denver crowd with "Signed, Sealed Delivered," Maddow's MSNBC colleagues boogied gracefully in their chairs, while Maddow busted a move that she must have stolen from a misfit in a John Hughes movie.

"I'm a dork," she said, re-creating the awkward moment at a downtown St. Paul Starbucks earlier this month during one of the few hours of the day she wasn't covering the Republican National Convention.

Her willingness to embrace her nerdiness and a goofball sense of humor are key reasons why MSNBC has given the 35-year-old Rhodes scholar her own nightly program, "The Rachel Maddow Show," the news network's attempt to give left-wing punditry a kindler, gentler face.

"When everyone else is zagging, I naturally zig," said Maddow, who sports a pair of glasses from the Ira Glass collection when off-screen. "But in this business, the ratio of words to facts is very large. We're all scrambling after the same golden morsels."

Maddow, who also hosts a nightly program on Air America radio, said she tries to distinguish herself by isolating herself from others' analyses, a strategy aided by the fact that she doesn't own a television set.

"I can't consume a lot of media because I'm easily distracted by visual stimuli," said Maddow, rolling an unopened bottle of water back and forth across the table. "I'm like a bass. 'Oh, look at the flashing light!'"

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Not that she has time to take in the latest episode of "Two and a Half Men."

A typical weekday starts at 8 a.m. when she wakes up in her cozy New York apartment ("It's about the size of a van") that she shares with her partner, artist Susan Miklua, and works on her upcoming book on military issues. By 11 a.m., she's at Air America's studios, where she dedicates six hours to reading and downloading stories on the Internet for her two shows, both of which are almost entirely scripted.

"I'm not an ad-libber," she said. "When you say something, you'd better have something to say or you're wasting a lot of people's time."

By prime time, it's a string of commentary on David Gregory's "Race for the White House," her radio program and the new TV show.

No wonder she's a hobbyist bartender.

Maddow's bookworm approach to her show, and the fact that she wrote her dissertation on prison-centered AIDS activism, may suggest to the uninitiated that she's as boring as gray wallpaper, but her new program drips with so much sarcasm it practically fogs up the screen. And while she claims not to be an ad-libber, casual conversation with her quickly turns into the kind of comedy routine you'd be hard pressed to find on the Sunset Strip.

When asked if the pundit circuit feels anything like a freak circus, Maddow launched into an impromptu bit about how all of them are animals desperate to get out of their cages. She carried on about how she's going to cater to her deaf aunt who was flying in -- uninvited -- to the first episode of her MSNBC show.

But Maddow's wit doesn't overshadow how seriously she takes the importance of political debate, and her dedication to gritty give-and-take discussion has made her a favorite of conservative voices like Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan.

"This is part of citizenship," she said. "This country needs a vibrant, rollicking, fun, ongoing argument."

It's hard to imagine someone more entertaining and insightful providing the liberal side of that debate -- even if she can't dance.

njustin@startribune.com • 612-673-7431