- Carl Peaslee on Summer Stories Series: "The form is fixed now. It is at the bottom of the post...."
- Kelsey Brown on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "I believe what she meant was that if you are consumed by your relation..."
- missed the point on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "I think my name says it..."
- in a relationship on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "why can't someone feel satisfied with their relationship and be happy ..."
- Jillian on Pimp My Campus: "oooh, new walkway! so excited to see it when I get back!!..."
That’s the Way It Shouldn’t Be
If it is often said that newspapers are the first draft of history, then the nightly press is the clearing of the throat. Much responsibility falls to get the tone and the voice of the news right.
And what a voice Walter Cronkite had. It was all things at once – authoritative, pleasant, and exuded Midwestern charm. In the age of Watergate, polling indicated that Americans trusted Cronkite more than their politicians. He was bestowed with the moniker, “the most trusted man in America.” We are already starting to hear much about how he harkens back to some mythical time when news was news.
But there lies the problem.
Unfortunately, by refusing to focus on the words he said, rather than the symbol he represented, we risk lionizing someone whose simplifying of national events did our culture a tremendous disservice.
For many, Cronkite was the embodiment of a time when the news really was “fair and balanced.” We mistake the simple comments of newspaperman and believe that there really was a time when things could be neatly boiled down into a simple evening broadcast. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that uttering the phrase, “And That’s the Way It Was,” must make everyone agree.
Don’t believe the hype. Cronkite died a crotchety old man whose politics finally shown through during the final years of his life when he went off on a speaking tour against the President. It was a fitting end for a man who was part of the Big Three – when only three networks that controlled the flow of information into our homes and thus how we lived our lives. Pundits like to trumpet Cronkite as some kind of purer Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann, who was a just-the-facts Middle America newspapermen, dontcha know. But really, the news culture of spin was just a logical extension of his cultivated public persona.
Nowhere is that politicization of information more clear than in a commencement speech at Pomona College in 2004 where he looked at the coming presidential campaign between John F. Kerry and George W. Bush. (For those interested, the introduction of that speech was delivered by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, a professor and blogger at Pomona College and well worth a read.)
Here is what Cronkite had to say about the Bush Administration and the challenges that face our nation going forward after the 1960s.
Well, here we are at Pomona, almost a half century later. And as we look around the world into which you folks will be moving so shortly, I can’t really say things look much brighter.
We are plagued with the Iraq war, a possibility of an improving economy—but still a tragically large number of unemployed and underemployed—and an environmental crisis that literally threatens our planet. Here at home, we have a collapsing infrastructure of failing bridges, failing dams, a highway system that needs immediate attention. And worst of all, an inadequate educational system. … And all of this as we face a national deficit that will hobble us through your generation—and through your children’s generation and very possibly, so desperate is it, that it may follow us through your grandchildren’s period of years.
… We have an administration in Washington that has brought on this condition, and we have a Democratic candidate presumptive who so far has proposed few remedies that offer any specifics that, to this observer, at least, promise the necessary New Deal in Washington.
To borrow a phrase from the leftist academia, let’s deconstruct this paragraph. The New Deal that Obama ushered in and that Cronkite called for has been just as disastrous as the first New Deal. Far from reducing unemployment, unemployment has exploded, growing faster than the Obama administration most pessimistic numbers forecast, with no signs of slowing. That Bush-created debt that Cronkite despises later in the speech, mushroomed under President Obama and the Democratic congress. With his failed stimulus bill, Obama quadruppled the national debt at the stroke of a pen, meaning that you and I are going to be paying and paying and paying for the experiments that Obama is starting to let loose on all of us. Try as Obama’s economic advisors do, 2004 looks like the salad days compared to 2009. Meanwhile, the so-called “environmental crisis” threatens to become a legislative economy killer, with its latest incarnation, cap and trade.
John F. Kerry failed to get elected in 2004, despite Cronkite’s wishes. But with Obama, Cronkite has now gotten his New Deal now that we’ve elected a Democratic candidate who promised to fix all that and more. The war in Iraq, misguided though it may have been, has been won, or at the very least wasn’t the debacle that Vietnam had been. (Much though the leftish commentariot, Cronkite included, would have us believe otherwise, Iraq was no Vietnam, though that doesn’t mean it won’t be rehashed and reexamined by aging baby boomers.)
But now that Obama shows signs of being less than the messiah we were promised, mustn’t we ask where are the seemingly objective journalists – like Cronkite and who at the very least ape his style – to question him as harshly as they criticized President Bush? Don’t count on it.
Before Pomona College’s Class of 2004, Cronkite lamented our infrastructure and education, but fails to draw the proper lessons: it’s that big government he loves that has so failed to build the roads adequately or train the next generation’s minds properly because, self-flagellate as we so often do, the government has no incentives to provide either. Why else would there be such a need for a private college, like Pomona College, if the government schools really did so well?
Our failing educational system, which Cronkite calls the worst challenge of them all, languishes because of politicians like Barack Obama, who elect to send their children to the best of the best private schools. And one option that we had to make those schools better -– school choice –- was cut off when Democrats cut funding for the D.C. vouchers program. Worst of all, the Obama administration suppressed a Department of Education report that showed that the children who attended private schools through the vouchers did better academically. (They released the report after the Democrats had cut the funding.)
Despite covering some of the most abusive government actions, Cronkite never stopped thinking that the government knows best. Cronkite supported a failed amendment to the (hopefully soon to be ruled unconstitutional) McCain-Feingold bill that would have forced TV broadcast companies to provide free airtime to candidates. That doesn’t sound very free speech-y to me. He demonized Christian fundamentalists and anyone who criticized his dream of a more forceful U.N.
But what’s so egregious about using the perch Cronkite got from years of media exposure is how he managed to make his big government dreams sound as if they were the latest reform, rather than the trite, failed policies of yesteryear. Small wonder then, that he called one-termer, President Jimmy Carter one of our smartest presidents ever.
And as our president praises Cronkite as an “icon” that “was the news,” I’m left wondering whether Obama’s and the collective nostalgia might have real costs. Do we really want to return to a world where we all sat around waiting to be told what to think? Do we really want to take at face value the slogan, “And that’s the way it is”? Wishing, and a bit of gravitas, won’t make utopian dreams come true.
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Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson is a writer for the Forum. He serves as editor emeritus of The Claremont Independent and as founder of the infamous/famous conservative blog, The Claremont Conservative. Most recently, his work has appeared in City Journal, The New York Sun, and BigGovernment.com. When he isn't writing, reading, working, or attending class, he is sleeping.
Recent
18 Comments
2009-07-22
12:59:48
Derrida is laughing from his grave.
2009-07-22
23:00:53
Of course Charles knows that. Get over yourself.
2009-07-22
13:54:40
I really don't get the point of this article. Are you trying to say we shouldn't lionize Walter Cronkite because he was wrong? I mean there's a reason they're called political beliefs: you generally can't prove these things one way or the other. Walter Cronkite perhaps was wrong about some of those things, but no one has a monopoly on What-It-Is-That-Should-Be—not even you, Charles. So pointing that out isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Nor exactly are Walter Cronkite’s views. Have you looked at the 2008 electoral map lately?
Nor do I really get the point of your analysis: it’s all statist versus non-statist, freedom-hating versus freedom-loving nonsense. You can’t just throw together some data, tired rhetoric, and assertions and call it an innovative argument. This is simply a sad attempt to denigrate the legacy of a broadcasting legend; we whitewash people's lives when they die. Get over it. Political disagreement is no reason to tarnish a good man's reputation.
2009-07-22
15:06:45
The point of the article was to ask why we need Walter Cronkites.
And no, I won't "whitewash" history. He was a crank and because of his biased reporting, American public approval turned against the war post-Tet, even though the U.S. had the Viet Cong on the ropes.
2009-07-22
16:50:22
I hope that bias of yours isn't incorporated in the writing of this article, Charles...
2009-07-22
16:56:16
@B
Well, it is an opinion piece. I did try and be a bit more charitable to him than I would have otherwise been. Respect for the dead and all.
2009-07-22
23:37:32
Charles's criticism of Cronkite and the "objective" reporting he represented is rather clear. What I really don't get is the point of your bitter response. It appears that you get far too angry and self-righteous for how flippantly you understand political disagreement. Apparently, since everything argument is just "belief," we ought not bother ourselves trying to discern which beliefs have better reasons supporting them than others.
Presumably this is why you take all of Charles's arguments and boil them down to "statist versus non-statist, freedom-hating versus freedom-loving nonsense." No need to actually think about the concerns he's raised, because hey, we've moved on. You see, for some of us old-fashioned types, something doesn't have to be "groundbreaking" or "innovative" in order to be true. But then again, we don't reduce all arguments to mere belief.
So to help you understand, you should see that Charles (rightfully, in my view) doesn't really think that Cronkite was such a "good man" because he believes that his skewed reporting hurt the country (most especially in regards to Vietnam).
I hope this explanation can encourage you to calm down and stopping using such tired rhetoric (like the expression "tired rhetoric") to dismiss people you don't agree with.
But if you still find this article difficult to understand, please don't ever try to make sense of this piece of work: http://cmcforum.com/opinion/06232009-californias-political-horizon.
2009-07-23
11:11:01
This is longer than I’d like, but I want to try to address your point fully. I always find it funny when people dismiss subjectivity as necessarily devolving into equivalence. Clearly political beliefs can be more or less justified. That doesn’t mean they aren’t beliefs. And that certainly doesn’t mean Cronkite wasn’t entitled to his.
I'm not claiming that discourse be innovative; I'm just tired of the same ideology repackaged in different policy proposals with the same repeated arrogance.
Let's take a particular example to illustrate the issue of Charles’ “tired rhetoric.”
“it’s that big government he loves that has so failed to build the roads adequately… because, self-flagellate as we so often do, the government has no incentives to provide either.”
I thought that we agreed roads are supposed to be public. Anyway, listen to what Charles is saying: there’s a failure simply because it’s “big government” that by nature apparently doesn’t have incentives. Our infrastructure is crumbling because we don’t fund it—plain and simple.
I also really don’t see in this after-the-fact revisionism about Vietnam. The war fundamentally was one in which we could not win, only not lose and give South Vietnam a chance—a chance that they chose never to take. Of course, there’s potential disagreement here, but it’s not like Cronkite’s actions or view were/are so egregious that he deserves this condemnation.
So to sum up, if you’re tired because I keep calling a spade a spade, then, again, I really don’t see the point.
2009-07-23
12:04:25
@Patrick Atwater,
No one is saying that Cronkite wasn't entitled to his opinions, but he certainly colored the facts of what was going on in Vietnam and elsewhere with his views. To suggest otherwise is naiive.
You point to an example of my supposedly tired rhetoric, but you still haven't pointed out how I'm wrong.
Why must the roads be provided by the government? It's not that way in a lot of countries which tend to be a lot more favorable of road privatization than we are. (This happens to be an obsession of mine, so I'll gladly debate it any day of the week, especially in LA.)
Why haven't "we" -- and who is this we anyways? -- funded the roads more? Because they tend to be bloated, overcost and built with big unions. Private road construction tends to be cheaper, last longer, and allow for more innovation. It's not tired at all, but what's getting tiresome is looking at the data and still having to argue with people who can't wrap their head around the notion that private things are more often than not preferable to government-run things. As for education, I'm tired of wasting my tax dollars on failed incentives for teachers and schools. Haven't we had enough of that?
I realize you know very little about Vietnam, Patrick, so I'll be gentle here. Tet was a colossal failure for the Viet Cong. The U.S. won totally militarily and the Viet Cong Generals later wrote in their memoirs that Tet was their last ditch effort. For anyone interested, read "A Viet Cong Memoir" by Truong Nhu Tang, the former Minister of Justice. He talks about how they were taken to the cleaners and decided that the only recourse was to play into the court of public opinion, which Cronkite and many other Americans fell prey to. Read the history before you have an opinion next time.
I'll have more on this later, but Cronkite's editorial was bunk, but it was influential.
2009-07-23
13:56:33
Public-private partnerships still ultimately are a purvey and domain of the state. I love them too. I think they're efficient and super awesome. The point is they still are a function of government. You seemed to say that government didn't have a place in infrastructure because it "failed." I couldn't disagree more.
I admittedly do not know much about Vietnam. But I do know it wasn't a war in the true sense. We could beat the N Vietnamese in every battle, but we'd only achieve strategic victory if South Vietnam stood up on its own. Your retrospective points about the Tet offensive simply don't speak to that. And the standard for Cronkite's opinion is not what we know looking back, but how his opinion represented or misrepresented the understanding at the time. Actually know what history is and how it should be used before you read it next time.
2009-07-23
14:28:39
@Patrick,
I disagree one hundred percent with private-public partnerships. They're straight down the road to fascism -- quite literally. Read the Road to Serfdom and think about how a private-public partnership is an oxymoron. How can one be a partner with the government when they can always be bailed out? Come on, now.
I'm not misusing history. I think he shouldn't have flown off the handle to get things so wrong when military people on the ground told him we won Tet. South Vietnam was standing up on its own and was part of the reason we won those engagements. And the North OKed S.V.'s territorial integrity, but then violated it because it knew the U.S. wasn't going to intervene after people like Cronkite turned the country against the war.
Again, know the history.
2009-07-22
14:29:47
While I agree that Mr. Cronkite got much more biased with age, that doesn't mean he wasn't a fine reporter in his youth, even if you disagreed with his older self. Journalism has changed over time but Walter Cronkite always gave an aura of reasonable openmindedness in his younger days. This is so unlike the O'reilly's and Olbermann's of today who advocate a point as being correct and are not open minded and rarely address multiple sides of arguments. Heck, nobody asks tough questions to political leaders anymore as they're afraid of getting blacklisted.
And if you just want to critique Mr. Cronkite's speech
1. We are still plagued with the Iraq war costing billions for what benefit? Spreading freedom to others who don't want it or don't have the institutions to guarantee it without significant aid?
2. We still have a large percentage of people unemployed and underemployed.
3. We still have environmental crisis which threaten the planet (forget global warming if you want, our fossil fuel use is unsustainable for even a century).
4. We still have collapsing infrastructure in need of repair (see the I-35 bridge collapse in Mn. Seriously, how does an eight lane bridge in a major US city just collapse in this day and age?)
5. Education is still underfunded. College should be free. Its a long term investment which returns at least 6% a year. Your earnings power is raised about 7x over a lifetime.
6. The debt is still looming.
7. The Bush admin didn't significantly address any of the above except for environmental issues which failed as cap n trade never took off and renewable energy efforts failed as oil eventually dropped back down to $50 a barrel and is hovering around $60-$70. Cap n trade may take off soon but it was originally a Bush strategy, not an Obama one.
Now if you just want to critique Obama, let me just say that spending billions of dollars takes time to have an effect. New Deals take time.
My question is, like Patrick asks, what is the point of this article? Do you just want to ramble on how big government isn't the most efficient form of government in every single scenario. Instead of focusing on how big gov't has let our infrastructure decay, maybe ask yourself why privately funded roads haven't become the norm, or why do toll and parking prices dramatically rise when privatized. Maybe ask yourself why we pay 2x the amt on average through a small government/insurance system for the same quality healthcare as big government socialized systems in other countries do. Maybe ask yourself why the US has some of the best public universities in the world and why private universities have a much smaller return on equity than public ones do. Big government has its place in life and while its not the savior of everyone and everything, you shouldn't discount it outright .
2009-07-22
15:22:22
@Old cronkite,
1. Iraq wasn't Vietnam, though, and I resent efforts to portray it as such.
2. We have a greater percentage thanks to Obama's stimulus and that percentage is growing by the day.
3. I'm not convinced that our fossil fuel use is "unsustainable" or that we aren't already transitioning out to cheaper forms of electricity or power.
4. Debatable. Bridges aren't built forever. And even the best bridge makers in the world occasionally have them fail. But the failure of one bridge isn't indicative of the country as a whole's infrastructure. Sorry, not buying it.
5. Totally disagree about education being "free." If you want to realize a capital gain in your human capital, fund it yourself. That is, if you actually believe that college is a good investment for everyone and I'm increasingly convinced that it isn't. The BA is a useless degree, especially in the humanities which almost always proliferate when education is paid for by someone else.
6. The debt grew more in 6 months of Obama than in 8 years of Bush and is projected to grow even faster.
7. Cap and trade was a (in my view ill-founded) compromise to implementing the dastardly Kyoto Protocol.
The New Deal failed at boosting the economy and it elongated the Great Depression. Read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes if you want to know more.
Let's break apart your final paragraph.
1. Point was to criticize those of us who believe government is the solution to all of our problems and try to guilt us into paying higher taxes for things that aren't necessarily better.
2. Privately funded roads were the norm until the government nationalized them. When that happened, the incentives to build roads, bridges, etc. disappeared. http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:ihiHBdJX8r0J:finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2008test/072408detest.pdf+history+of+private+infrastructure+in+the+united+states&hl=en&gl=us&pli=.
There are dozens and dozens of examples of privatized infrastructure international and nationally. The most recent example of this was the privatization by Indiana of its toll roads in the northern part of the state.
3. The figures about our system are blown out of proportion. 3a.) We pay for care for everyone due to federal law that makes it a crime to turn down someone who comes to an emergency room -- this leads to higher costs. 3b. We finance nearly 80% of the world's drug market. That's included in the figure and a lot of that cost is in pointless lawyering that goes on over patent protections. Lots of the world free rides on us because we produce the best drugs in the world. Period. 3c.) Maybe if we also didn't have rapacious ambulance chasing doctors and reformed our tort law, much of this cost would also be driven down.
Haven't you ever wondered if maybe there are a lot of people out there who don't have health insurance because they think every election cycle that the Democrats will provide it for them on other people's dime and hence that that in turn helps exacerbate the problem?
The U.S. has some of the best public universities in the world because it taxes its citizens to produce them. It's private universities consistently outperform them. It's a no brainer why private universities have a lower return on equity. The state governments will just bail out failing public universities and so they can be more risky with their portfolios and hence realize greater earnings.
2009-07-23
14:58:31
Charles,
I couldn't agree with you more, especially on the funding of college. Besides, doesn't anyone place any value on working hard and achieving things on our own anymore? You know, the old 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' saying?
But Charles, we should realize that to college students, a welfare state-like federal gov't is appealing. Most college kids, especially at expensive private schools like CMC, live in a perpetual welfare state where someone else (mommy and daddy) pay the bills, and they get the reap all of the benefits. So for them, it seems like a logical extension to apply this same policy to their soon to be new mommy and daddy: the federal government (via everyone else's tax dollars.) The ones who take private sector jobs will come around to our way of thinking soon enough.
2009-07-23
22:52:21
@ Scott...the way you're criticizing CMCers, do you actually go to this school? Or just some person who follows Charles blog and decided to write on the forum? Because you're making some rather big assumptions about "expensive private schools like CMC" and the people that go there. Obviously you don't know many people who go here.
2009-07-24
09:42:24
@B
Yes I go here.
2009-07-26
21:42:12
The Iraq War has been won? Are we going to need an article on the topic to scrap this one out?
2009-07-27
12:21:13
Violence has subsided and the economy is stabilizing.
Even if you're like me and opposed the war initially, you have to admit that it's looking pretty decisively like the worst of it is behind us.