Walter Cronkite returns to his trusty typewriter

Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America” back when Americans actually trusted anyone in public life, is going back to work next month. At age 86. As a syndicated newspaper columnist.

“I don’t think there’s been such a critical moment in the history of our country and indeed the world as there is right now,” Cronkite said by phone last week, “and I can’t stand aside when I have a thought or two that might be interesting and possibly even helpful.”

Cronkite may be kidding himself. And his new employer, King Features Syndicate, may just be trying to exploit his name. After all, the public now regards journalists as only slightly more credible than used car salesmen and men trolling for online dates. Even more problematically, Cronkite promises to offer liberal views at a time when the country is enamored of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

On the other hand, we are not exactly awash in intelligent commentary on either side of the political spectrum these days, and Cronkite is thoughtful, incisive and possessed of a greater reservoir of public goodwill than anyone since Albert Schweitzer.

Cronkite was the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” for 19 years, calmly guiding the American public through the trauma of Vietnam, the tragedy of the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and the triumph of the first moon landing before he retired in 1981.

Cronkite was supposed to have had a continuing relationship with CBS after he left the anchor’s job, but he was used sparingly -- largely because his former employer feared that his continuing presence would prevent his successor, Dan Rather, from being perceived as “the personification of CBS News.”

Though deeply disappointed, Cronkite has kept busy in the intervening 22 years -- hosting occasional TV specials, producing programs for the Discovery Network and the Learning Channel, appearing periodically on PBS, writing his autobiography.

Last year, the New York Times published a letter to the editor from Cronkite, complaining that media conglomeratization had made “the bottom line seem like the only line. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be.” Glenn Mott, managing editor of New York-based King Features Syndicate, was so impressed with Cronkite’s “forceful stand” in this letter and in other forums that he proposed a weekly opinion column.

It will start Aug. 3 under the rubric “And That’s the Way I See It” -- a play on his CBS signoff, “And that’s the way it is.”

But the column title is more than just an attempt to capitalize on Cronkite’s name and reputation. It’s also an attempt to distinguish his column -- which will be highly opinionated -- from the straightforward, “just the facts, ma’am, approach” for which he was so widely respected on television.

Cronkite has strong feelings about what’s going on in the country and the world today, and he’s eager to share them with readers.

An independent voter

When we spoke, he was harshly critical of President Bush’s economic policies and his “unilateral efforts that endanger our entire future foreign policy.”

“Our grandchildren’s grandchildren will pay” the consequences of Bush’s policies, he said.

Cronkite is a registered independent -- “beholden to neither party,” he’s always said -- but he acknowledges that he’s “basically liberal.” In fact, he said, his first column will attempt to define and explain his view of liberalism.

Jay Kennedy, editor in chief at King, won’t disclose exactly how many papers have agreed to carry Cronkite’s column -- “We’re still approaching editors,” he says -- but he describes the early response as “very enthusiastic” and says “dozens” of papers have already signed up.

That’s not surprising.

Not only is Cronkite still a big name in a celebrity era, he’s also still sharp and full of opinions -- and he did start his journalism career writing for a newspaper, the Houston Post, as a campus correspondent at the University of Texas.

He went on to an 11-year career with United Press International, covering World War II, then going on to the Nuremberg war trials before returning home to work for a group of radio stations in Kansas and his native Missouri. He joined CBS in 1950 and became the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” a decade later.

Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, Cronkite was a revered national figure. Though he always had robust opinions on issues of public policy, he masked them well and was widely seen as neither partisan nor elitist. He was, Time magazine said, “the single most convincing and authoritative figure in television news.”

In 1968, when Cronkite said on the air that the United States had become “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam and should negotiate a settlement and withdrawal, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson disconsolately told an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Doesn’t mince words

But for all his avuncular, Middle American image on camera, Cronkite was always a hard-driving, fiercely competitive newsman off camera. I saw that firsthand in 1979 when I spent a day with him so I could write a long magazine profile.

Throughout the day, he was calling sources, prodding subordinates, asking questions, editing copy, deciding how stories would be played on that night’s broadcast. At one point, when someone handed him a statement that had come in earlier from the Iranian Embassy, answering several questions he’d been pursuing, he exploded.

“How long’s this goddamn thing been kicking around here?” he asked. “Jesus Christ, that story probably sat here all day. Son of a bitch.”

He continued to fume and fret and drive and demand through the day, right up until 6:28, when he combed his hair, put on his jacket and -- two minutes later -- began the broadcast with his calm and customary, “Good evening.”

I happened to bump into Cronkite at a media event several weeks later, the day my story on him appeared on the newsstands. In trying to show the emotionally charged side of Cronkite unknown to the television audience, I had included in the 8,000-word story about a dozen judiciously chosen examples of his outbursts, punctuated by “Goddamn it!” “Jesus Christ!” and “Hell!” in various combinations and permutations.

Cronkite was not happy. He laced into me for “making it seem that every word out of my mouth is a swear word.”

I explained why I’d quoted him as I had and I reminded him of several far more vulgar epithets he’d hurled that day, “all of which,” I said, “I left out of my story.”

He grinned sheepishly, and when we were alone, he put his arm around me and praised the profile.

But he sure knew his audience.

I received more than 1,000 letters on that story -- more than I’ve ever received on any story -- and I think 998 of them expressed horror that “our” Walter Cronkite could have used such coarse language.

He won’t use coarse language in his newspaper column. And he won’t have the same impact or command the same universal respect he did as the CBS anchor. The media, society and the relationship between the two have changed too much in the last 22 years for any journalist to achieve that. But Cronkite cares passionately about good journalism and about the problems we face as a society, and if he can demonstrate, as a columnist, the same determination, integrity, drive and fair-mindedness that he embodied at both CBS and UPI, he may provide a glimmer of relief among the screaming heads and polarizing pundits who now pass for political commentators.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.