Douglas Brinkley’s new biography
of Walter Cronkite has sparked an intriguing controversy about the CBS
anchorman’s famous trip to Vietnam in February 1968. That’s when, as
legend has it, Cronkite was so shocked at the devastation of the
communists’ Tet offensive that he went over to see for himself what was
really going on. And he concluded the war was a stalemate, probably
unwinnable.
Brinkley buys the argument, put forth by the late David Halberstam in his characteristically portentous manner, that Cronkite’s February 27 broadcast, "Report from Vietnam," played a major role in turning Americans against the war and inducing President Lyndon Johnson to abandon his reelection campaign.
Cronkite’s report, writes Brinkley, was "immediately seen as a catalyst by pundits in the Monday newspapers. . . . Cronkite turned dove, and the hawk Johnson lost his talons." This tracks with what Halberstam wrote in his 1979 book, The Powers That Be: "It was the first time in American history that a war has been declared over by an anchorman." Lyndon Johnson was said to have watched the broadcast and exclaimed to his press secretary, George Christian, "If I have lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America."
Harvard’s Louis Menand, writing in The New Yorker, has an interesting take on this. "The trouble with this inspiring little story," he says, "is that most of it is either invented or disputed." He cites W. Joseph Campbell’s 2010 book, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misrepresented Stories in American Journalism, as noting that Johnson did not see the Cronkite report when it was broadcast. Menand recalls a 1979 quote from Christian saying he really didn’t recall what Johnson said in response to whatever or if he said anything at all like what was then being quoted. And Menand questions whether Cronkite’s broadcast had anything approaching the impact now attributed to it.
Read more: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/cronkites-vietnam-blunder-7185
Brinkley buys the argument, put forth by the late David Halberstam in his characteristically portentous manner, that Cronkite’s February 27 broadcast, "Report from Vietnam," played a major role in turning Americans against the war and inducing President Lyndon Johnson to abandon his reelection campaign.
Cronkite’s report, writes Brinkley, was "immediately seen as a catalyst by pundits in the Monday newspapers. . . . Cronkite turned dove, and the hawk Johnson lost his talons." This tracks with what Halberstam wrote in his 1979 book, The Powers That Be: "It was the first time in American history that a war has been declared over by an anchorman." Lyndon Johnson was said to have watched the broadcast and exclaimed to his press secretary, George Christian, "If I have lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America."
Harvard’s Louis Menand, writing in The New Yorker, has an interesting take on this. "The trouble with this inspiring little story," he says, "is that most of it is either invented or disputed." He cites W. Joseph Campbell’s 2010 book, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misrepresented Stories in American Journalism, as noting that Johnson did not see the Cronkite report when it was broadcast. Menand recalls a 1979 quote from Christian saying he really didn’t recall what Johnson said in response to whatever or if he said anything at all like what was then being quoted. And Menand questions whether Cronkite’s broadcast had anything approaching the impact now attributed to it.
Read more: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/cronkites-vietnam-blunder-7185
No comments:
Post a Comment