Posted on 03/28/2003 2:44:08 PM PST by rhema
He doesn't care for the President, declaring him "arrogant" and comparing him to a chimpanzee at one point, and unflatteringly referring to President Bush's advisers as "cohorts," while elegantly labeling the advisers to Bobby Kennedy as a "coterie."
But like the President or not, Walter Cronkite told an overflow audience at Drew University in Madison on Tuesday, March 18, military action against Iraq had become inevitable, and "the time has come to give our full support to the troops involved."
They deserve our loyalty, Cronkite said, as they go to war through no fault of their own.
The third speaker in this year's Drew Forum at the university, with the theme "Journalism: A Rough Draft of History," Cronkite addressed an audience of more than 2,000 listeners, the biggest crowd yet in the series.
Cronkite, 86, lives in Manhattan with his wife of 63 years, and he appeared at Drew impeccably dressed, confident, trim and nursing a tennis injury. His rich warm voice, which has delivered news and entertainment to audiences of all ages these past 60 years, still flows smoothly. His characteristic moustache, now gray and not easily spotted from a distance, is otherwise still the same.
In his introduction Drew University President Thomas Kean, the former governor of New Jersey, called Cronkite "the greatest journalist of our time," whose credo was always "to be fair, accurate and unbiased."
Then the audience was treated to a film retrospective of Cronkite's career, from the early days of live television, where sometimes graphics ran upside-down and the unflappable anchorman kept the show moving along, to his cameo appearance on the Mary Tyler Moore Show before a blusteringly jealous Ted Baxter.
Cronkite was a news anchor for most of the past century's defining moments: World War II, the first moon landing, the assassinations of JFK and King, the Vietnam War, the meeting of Sadat and Begin. He retired - along with his trademark "and that's the way it is" - from CBS-TV in 1981 and began producing historical and educational documentaries.
In his filmed speech, Cronkite summarized his admiration for the American people, particularly for coming through the tumultuous decade of the 1960s.
"It was quite a century," he said. "We Americans do have a way of rising to the challenges that confront us. Just when it seems we're most divided, we suddenly show our remarkable solidarity. The 20th century may be leaving us with a host of problems, but I've also noted that it does seem darkest before the dawn, and there's reason to hope for the 21st century - and that's the way it will be."
Departure In Format
This Drew Forum was a departure from earlier installments. Instead of addressing the crowd from a podium, Cronkite was seated, as was Kean, who played the interlocutor. The two men sat informally in early American side chairs, and Kean directed Cronkite's remarks by asking him to respond to a series of well-made questions.
Cronkite speaks in clear and complete thoughts, with originality and without notes. He spoke for one hour and 10 minutes, and took questions from the audience for another 20 minutes after that.
The format suited Cronkite, and reinforced his familiarity to the audience as the news anchor, always seated at his desk. Cronkite did point out that he didn't want anyone to think he sat because of "an old man's gout," when what he's got is "an old man's tennis," having recently pulled his Achilles tendon and still recuperating.
Kean first put forth the question on everyone's minds: What were Cronkite's thoughts on the current situation with Iraq, on the eve of war?
"There is virtually no chance we're going to avoid a war at this point," said Cronkite. "The time has come that we put all of our distaste for the mission aside, and give our full support to our troops involved. That is the loyalty that is due these soldiers, who have had no part in deciding on this course of action and are there to defend the United States under the terms that have been established by the President and his advisers and cohorts."
Cronkite said he is very disappointed and "considerably worried" that affairs had come to this pass. He said that, as always, the military is more confident than perhaps it should be. He nevertheless predicted the military will perform its mission quickly, and with a minimum of casualties. What concerns him most is the aftermath of our "adventure in Iraq."
Allies in Western Europe have turned their backs on us, Cronkite said, but we will need their moral support, and their financial help, when Iraq's new government is set up. He said Bush's "arrogance" in addressing our allies "has been exceptional," and they have taken "great umbrage" with this. Without their help, Cronkite said, it will be hard to maintain that the U.S. went into Iraq with the mission of liberating its people from a cruel dictator, and did not simply have the intention of taking over the country.
"The cost of this episode, this adventure, is going to be terribly severe," Cronkite said. He blamed Congress for not demanding an accounting of the expense involved. He said that as the troops are paid, as equipment is replaced when the sands destroy it, and as Navy ships have been deployed and waiting out at sea for months, Congress should be doing its job and calling out these expenses.
Huge expenditures, huge national indebtedness and lower taxes are combining into a disaster, Cronkite said, warning "we are going to be in such a financial fix when this war is over, or before this war is over," that we will hardly be able to meet the everyday expenses of government. He predicted this will lead to the printing of more money, and inevitably inflation.
He said of the cost of war draining already light national coffers, the U.S. "won't have money to fulfill education promises, medical care and our infrastructure."
He held up Franklin Roosevelt's Depression-era programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA), as one approach to some of the problems the future holds for us. In these programs in the 1930s and 1940s, the government hired and paid citizens to work on highways, schoolhouses, and bridges.
"We beat the Great Depression by paying people to work for the good of the country," Cronkite said. Even this would prove impossible, he said, if there is no money left over from the war.
"We cannot wait for the terrorists to get nuclear weapons," allowed Cronkite.
He added gravely, however, that this new paradigm, this "theory of preventive war" undertaken "without being attacked," is setting an example for the troubled countries of the world, especially in the case of African border wars - and perhaps imparting a lesson on the importance of owning weapons of mass destruction.
Dullest, Smartest
Cronkite has had some interviews that stand out from others over the years - some ignominious. He said President Herbert Hoover was "about the dullest man I ever met," and President Jimmy Carter was the smartest. Cronkite's dream interviews would have been Pope Pius VII, who was accused by the Russians of favoring the Germans in World War II, and Adolf Hitler himself. "I'd like to have seen his face as he tried to explain what he'd done," said Cronkite.
Cronkite has been approached many times to run for political office, but maintains that journalists should never use their position to build a political base. The journalist's job is to be accurate and fair, he said, and for one to run for national office "would sully the reputation of the profession."
Think the tennis injury will prove to be terminal?
Cronkite is an intellectual fraud. He didn't mind impacting the political base of Bill and Hillary Clinton favorably, even though Clinton was about to be impeached. And as for being accurate and fair, his depictions of this nation and it's destiny are anything but accurate or fair.
I detest this man. I grew up respecting him and found that he is among the least worthy of respect this nation has to offer. He should move somewhere else where his sensitivities would be less impacted.
You mean we really can't believe the obsequious Kean's servile flattery of Cronkite as "the greatest journalist of our time," whose credo was always "to be fair, accurate and unbiased"?
Hey Cronkite, I've got news for you. Ted Baxter was a better anchor that you were.
I don't know if or where we might directly reach His Self-Importance, but there's a "voice your opinion" link at the bottom of the Hanover Eagle story.
I just saw a clip of Jack Valenti on FoxNews (John Gibson's Big Story) who with furrowed brow was comparing what's going on with Bush and this Iraq campaign and the Vietnam War under LBJ. He warned, ominously, that LBJ "never got the honest truth" about what was going on, and the battle plan turned out to have major flaws. The one person he didn't blame was Johnson himself who was micro-managing the war and using polls to decide whether and when to bomb. These liberals are worse than stupid: they are DANGEROUS!
Problem is, he's probably got a never-ending supply of newly graduated journalism-school acolytes ready to do eager obeisance to him in their "news" articles.
I didn't see the earlier postings (probably better for my blood pressure that I didn't) when I searched with the first three words of the headline. Were the other stories as tuchis-kissing as Ms. Weisgerber's paean to Cronkite?
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