Cronkite
excoriates Bush but supports troops
By ANNA WEISGERBER , Contributing Writer
03/27/2003
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."
©Recorder Newspapers 2003
Copyright © 1995 - 2003 PowerOne Media,
Inc.
Jennifer Gross, 19, of Sparta, who wasn't yet born when Cronkite surrendered his groundbreaking anchor post in 1981.
