“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
No offense to Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and whoever is anchoring the news at ABC right now (Diane Sawyer? Really?), but it’s hard to imagine any of them saying anything that would help lead a president of the United States to consider leaving office. But that’s what happened 42 years ago tonight, when CBS Nightly News anchor Walter Cronkite concluded a special broadcast on the recent Tet Offensive with a rare, brief, and potent editorial suggesting that America cease fighting the Vietnam War.
That evening, the highly-respected and influential Cronkite said:
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. 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. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But 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.
President Lyndon Johnson, watching live in the White House, reportedly then turned to aides and said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
So far this week Clinton has lost Time.com, USA Today, and others...
http://www.iancfriedman.com/?p=383