Douglas Brinkley

I found this biography mediocre, pulling its punches far too frequently to present Walter Cronkite in the most positive light, despite hinting at the American news icon's wandering middle-of-the-road politics, overweening ambition and often unremarkable achievements. Between the lines, the book silhouettes the more impressive careers of his (apparently resented) coworkers Eric Sevareid, Dan Rather and especially Ed Murrow. It was interesting to discover how often Cronkite knowingly tailored show more his slant on newscasts to suit his employers'/ government's/ own career ambitions: propaganda about claimed American successes in WWII, the space-race and Vietnam. The CBS News team I watched across the Canadian border as a child provided the best internal political analysis on American TV and a strong position against Jim Crow politics in the US south, but the avuncular Cronkite seems to have been too often an uncritical and deferential publicist for Eisenhower, NASA, Johnson and even Nixon while shaping his image as an 'anchorman' (more accurately termed in British English a 'newsreader'). Tellingly, this biography uses the word 'beloved' 17 times to describe its subject. show less

Summary: The biography of Walter Cronkite, from his early reporting days, his United Press work during World War 2, and his years at CBS, including his nineteen years on the CBS Evening News, and his “retirement years,” where he came out as a liberal.

I grew up with “Uncle Walter.” I was a fourth grader when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and watched as Walter Cronkite walked us through the days that followed, from his initial announcement of the death of Kennedy, removing his show more glasses and sitting in silence, connecting with the stunned response of all of us. I watched the unfolding of the Vietnam war, which Cronkite declared, after visiting the front lines in 1967, a “stalemate.” He covered the horrors of 1968 from the deaths of Kennedy and King through the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention. With the world, I watched the orbiting of the moon on Christmas eve in 1968, and the landing on the moon in the summer of 1969, accompanied by his characteristic “Oh, boy!” Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the Iran hostages, and that final sign off in March of 1981. “That’s the way it is.”

Douglas Brinkley chronicles all of this in this outstanding biography, and so much more. He covers the shaping and the rise that made him “the most trusted man in America.” We follow him from his sports reporting forays, his unfinished college career at UT Austin, his radio news experience at KCMO, and the pivotal opportunity of becoming night editor at the United Press office in Kansas City, that honed his instincts as a news hound both careful with the facts and eager to be the first to break the story that would go with him for the rest of his life. Then the war came, and through persistence he won the opportunity to cover the war in Europe for the United Press on the front lines, flying in a bombing run, and with troops in northern Africa, on D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge, first meeting Andy Rooney as part of the “Writing 69th.” His bombing dispatch caught the attention of Edward R. Murrow, who thought he’d succeeded in recruiting Cronkite to CBS only to have him renege, still believing print was the thing.

Murrow tried again and Cronkite joined CBS in the fifties to cover the Korean War. Returning stateside, he failed as the host of CBS’s version of the Today show, hosted “You Are There,” a weekly show in which Cronkite would interview historical figures or cover events like the Boston Tea Party. It was in 1956 that he found his true calling as anchor of CBS television’s political convention coverage, first earning the nickname, “Old Ironpants” for his stamina.

We learn about the complicated relationship with Edward R. Murrow, the dean of broadcasters, both mentor and rival. Cronkite continued to accumulate achievements, polishing his TV credentials with the coverage of the Mercury 7 astronauts and his relationship with John Glenn. Murrow left CBS at Kennedy’s request to lead the US Information Agency. When it became apparent that Douglas Edwards was coming to the end of his tenure, the rivalry became fierce. In the end Cronkite won over Eric Sevareid, who did offer commentary at the end of newscasts for a time, Charles Collingwood, Charles Kuralt, and Howard K. Smith. Cronkite was Paley’s choice, and for nineteen years anchored the CBS Evening News.

Brinkley covers the team of people who worked with Cronkite, perhaps Richard Salant as news director, and a young, ambitious reporter by the name of Dan Rather. He describes the slow, upward climb to supplant NBC’s top position in the news ratings. He recounts the decisive role Cronkite played in changing the narrative about Vietnam, after passing along the administration version in 1965 and 1966, how he served to “platform” the story Woodward and Bernstein were putting together about Watergate, and his role in bringing Sadat and Begin together.

Brinkley offers an unvarnished account of how difficult Cronkite’s retirement was and his bitterness toward Dan Rather, his successor, who cut him out of opportunities to continue to contribute, despite Rather’s flagging ratings. They would never reconcile. Freed of the reporter’s commitment to neutrality, his own liberal views came to the fore, brought on, in part, by the movie, Network. In later years, he would rail on the war on drugs, and argue for the legalization of marijuana.

Betsy Cronkite, Walter’s wife of 65 years comes through as a force in her own right, often traveling with Cronkite, and helping him keep perspective. I was also surprised to learn that two of his close friends were Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead, who encouraged Cronkite’s drumming, and Jimmy Buffett. I never knew Cronkite was either a “Deadhead” or a “Parrothead.” Buffett was actually at Cronkite’s death bed, playing songs, which he also did at his funeral.

Brinkley gives us a portrait with warts and all. Cronkite was absolutely tenacious about both getting the facts straight and getting the story out, and he succeeded so well at this because of his relentless pursuit of the reporter’s disciplines. He had a kind of “common touch” that came from middle-American roots but his credibility was earned and not just because of an “on air” personality. Yet he was contemptuous of some of his rivals, both Murrow and Rather. He liked to carouse, and while he gave opportunities to women like Connie Chung and Katie Couric, he was a bit of a chauvinist, still enjoying the company of his “old boys.”

Reading this account makes one wonder whether such news coverage is possible today, and perhaps wistful for a different time. Cronkite did not have to deal with a 24/7 news cycle on cable TV and the internet and the increasingly partisan character of many news outlets. I suspect he would have done what he did, pursue the facts and work at getting the story out both quickly and right. What this biography reminds me of is why we did not have the epistemic crisis in the Cronkite years that we face when it comes to the news today. Back then, you trusted Cronkite, and he warranted that trust. We didn’t ask, “who can you trust?” Today that sounds incredibly naïve. Sadly, today it is. show less

The fact that one can get a copy of Stephen Ambrose's Rise to Globalism at virtually any American used bookstore attests to the overwhelmingly positive reception accorded this synthesis, which by 1983 had gone through 12 reprintings. The success of Ambrose's book may rest in his ability to provide critical judgments of American foreign policy within a balanced framework. As a survey it functions admirably.

On contentious issues, Ambrose seems to straddle controversy and approach the golden show more mean. Yet his conclusions are often critical of American attitudes and actions. The chapter on the beginnings of the Cold War, for instance, offers a critique of mutual U.S.-Soviet intransigence over the settlement in East Europe. At first glance it appears to be here that Ambrose locates the origin of the Cold War, in mutual hostilities which offer enough "blame" to go around. Though he notes that "there is no satisfactory date to mark the beginning of the Cold War," he strikes a note of inevitability by pointing out that "Russia controlled Eastern Europe. This crucial result of World War II destroyed the Grand Alliance and gave birth to the Cold War." (93) If one reads further, a more critical note becomes audible.

Ambrose makes clear that it is certainly understandable that Americans would have been outraged at Soviet actions in Eastern Europe, since "they shut the West out completely. By any standard the Soviet actions were high-handed, their suppressions brutal."(98) The Soviets had every right, however, to expect to control that region as its sphere of influence. The illusion of omnipotence, the false belief that America could influence events even in the Soviet zone is ultimately the "cause" of the Cold War. Truman was the first in a long line of Cold War presidents who would fail to differentiate between American influence and power.

"American influence would never be as great as American power. Over the next two decades American leaders and the American people were forced to learn that bitter lesson. American power vilas vaster than anyone else,' s, but in many cases it was not usable power and thus could not be translated into diplomatic victory. Vietnam would be the ultimate proof of American inability to force others to do as she wished, but the process began much earlier, in 1945, with Truman's attempt to shape the course of events in East Europe." (105)

What differentiates Ambrose's criticism from that of many of the revisionist writers of the New Left is his lack of a thoroughgoing critique of the American system in his survey. His criticism remains at the level of tactics. In the instance of the beginnings of the Cold War, Truman failed to be sufficiently realistic about Eastern Europe. One senses that Ambrose believes FDR could have done a better job of "dealing" with the Soviets.

Stephen Ambrose's chapter on the Korean War concentrates on President Truman's approach to the conflict. Ambrose credits Harry Truman with the institutionalization of the Cold War, a process whereby the strategy of containment was instituted on a global scale. In a manner strikingly similar to Gar Alperovitz, he argues that the Korean War provided the pretext under which Truman solidified America's position in Europe. This Asian war provided the excuse Truman needed for rearming America and NATO (to include Germany). Despite the Europe-fist overtones of the Truman-Acheson strategy in NSC-68, the vision of containment was becoming increasingly global.

The Korean War provided the context in which a major shift toward globalism took place. Yet the process of instituting vhat one revisionist on WvJI had called "permanent war for permanent peace" was not without its difficulties. The primary difficulty with the process of institutionalization was that this regularized approach to a high level of peace-time preparedness was quite foreign to the American mind.

"Containment had never been very satisfying emotionally, built as it was on the constant reiteration of the Communist threat and the propaganda line that divided the line into areas that were free and those that were enslaved. Millions of Americans wanted to accept their Christian obligation and free the slaves. Other millions waned to destroy, not just contain, the Communist threat, on the grounds that if it were allowed to exist, the Cold War would go on forever, at a constantly increased cost." (181-2)

Within this context the conflict between MacArthur and Truman over vlar aims in Korea takes on added importance. MacArthur, seeking to roll back Communism in Asia, questioned the very strategy of Truman's policy of world-wide containment of Communism. Reflecting the popular American frustration with containment, MacArthur became an instant popular hero after his dismissal. Truman, hmvever, won out in the end. Despite tactical defeats, his strategy of containment had been implemented on a global scale. America was in it for the long haul. show less

Some may balk at the fact that the titular moonshot does not appear until this book's epilogue. Aside from the final 20 or so pages, the bulk of American Moonshot is dedicated to deconstructing the sheer amount of work, political will, money, and intelligence that went into making it possible -- all told, in the span of less than 10 years.

Brinkley also brings up the point that, for this particular feat, everything had to go correctly. The right people had to be in the right place at the show more right time; the US needed to be an economic powerhouse, spurred on by Eisenhower's fiscal frugality; the country needed bold leadership in the form of JFK; NASA (once created) needed engineering experts; JFK needed LBJ to push Congress to continually push through massive budgets that spent billions with this one goal in mind.

It's breathtaking when you consider how just one misplaced piece could have resulted in the US never going to the moon -- at least, not by 1960 and perhaps not ever.

Fascinating historical non-fiction that blends science and politics seamlessly. show less