The Cronkite Doctrine

Mr. Cronkite, what advice would you give to the next CBS anchor?

Mr. Cronkite, we have some vivid memories of some rare moments when you betrayed more emotion. Do you think for an anchor, when it comes to betraying emotion, less is more?

Mr. Cronkite, has CBS recovered from the Dan Rather Memogate fiasco?

At one point, two reporters got into a shouting match over who would get the floor to ask Cronkite a question. It reminded Cronkite of how, in the old days, reporters would always ace out New York Herald Tribune correspondent Homer Bigart, who spoke with a stutter, under similar circumstances, until Bigart would finally shout, "Wait a damned minute!" -- with a stutter, which Cronkite faithfully imitated to tittering from the room.

It played so well that, like a seasoned comic, Cronkite went back to it a couple more times during the very long and often entertaining Q&A session.

Asked what was his proudest moment as a journalist, Cronkite quickly said it was the night he delivered his editorial on the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Nearly 38 years ago, he closed a broadcast with an editorial that is credited with hastening the U.S. pullout from Vietnam.

"To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past," Cronkite said that night. "To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. . . . It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could."

On Sunday he was asked if he thought the Iraq war had reached the same point and would he have tried, if he were anchor today, to deliver a similar editorial (good luck on that).

"Yes, I would!" Cronkite blurted out before the reporter even got to the end of his question. The editorial he said he would have delivered following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, would have been: "Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves terribly missing in the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation, to help rebuild some of our important cities of the United States, and therefore we are going to have to bring our troops home."

He told the reporters: "We would have been able to retire with honor.

"We've done everything we can. We're going to have to leave it with [the Iraqis] someday, and it is my belief that we should get out now."

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