Did Rachel Maddow Miss Her Walter Cronkite Moment? So Claims 60′s Anti-War Activist Tom Hayden

by Meenal Vamburkar | 8:31 am, July 22nd, 2010

» 12 comments

MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow recently visited Afghanistan — and anchored her show from the country — to find out what was really going on and to see for herself whether we’re fighting a losing battle. Fair enough. But Tom Hayden, in The Nation, argues that Maddow did not make the best of her time there, and, indeed, missed a potential Walter Cronkite moment.

Maddow’s trip to the war-torn country was similar to Cronkite’s trip to Vietnam in 1968. Cronkite said the war was “mired in stalemate” and we’ve all heard Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous reported remark: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” That is a testament to the influence Cronkite had and the respect he commanded.

Hayden, himself, is known for his social and political activism and anti-war involvement in the late 1960s. In The Nation, he draws a parallel between Vietnam and Afghanistan and asks, “Isn’t this precisely the situation in Afghanistan today, or worse? The war itself is not going well.” — and many people want out. Drawing from these similarities, he wonders why Maddow didn’t ask Richard Holbrooke more pointed questions:

Maddow never questioned Holbrooke’s repeated contention that Afghanistan is not Vietnam, where the youthful Holbrooke himself was involved in a failed counterinsurgency almost 40 years ago.

Couldn’t Maddow have challenged the core justification for the war, not just how well the war is going? Indeed if American lives and national security are at stake, the military doctrine of the 50-80 year “long war” would seem justified.

Here is where independent journalism is so critical. Maddow might have asked why 100,000 US troops are fighting in a country where the CIA estimate of Al Qaeda numbers is less than 100, and whether the US intervention itself has pushed Al Qaeda to sanctuaries in Pakistan and Yemen [featured last week as the next Al Qaeda base in a New York Times cover story].

The remarks at the end of one segment were the closest Maddow came to what Hayden thinks she should have questioned:

To be fair to Maddow, she at one point wondered if “maybe the clock has run out” for saving Afghanistan, and questioned if the counterinsurgency campaign is being fought on the “wrong premise” that there really is an Afghanistan regime that can be revived. In her concluding summary…[Maddow] was ambiguous, asserting on the one hand that it’s wrong to ask young Americans to fight and die if the Kabul regime is beyond repair, while on the other hand claiming that “development, training, support [are] OK, but lives, no. That’s the choice, not partisan, not even passionate. It is rational.”

[emphasis ours]

Hayden concludes that “Maddow is less bold today on Afghanistan than Cronkite was on Vietnam 32 years ago, though the CBS anchor was by far the more mainstream of the two.” The Maddow/Cronkite comparison is interesting because of the parallels between the two wars. But a lot has changed in those 32 years, and it is important to keep a relative perspective of things: Maddow may have a quite a fan base and one of her network’s more popular shows, but she arguably does not wield the same degree of influence that Walter Cronkite did.

Afghanistan, Maddow Cronkite Moment, msnbc, Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow Afghanistan, The Nation, Tom Hayden, Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite Vietnam

Moderate

” missed a potential Walter Cronkite moment.”

It would have been written off as MSNBC being MSNBC catering to the extreme left viewers. For the most part, Cronkite tried to hide his far left bias.
BatBoy

She should have blown something up…that would have made those old lefties happy!
The Real Royal King

Hayden’s comment is most interesting. However, I am not sure the VIetnam : Afghanistan comparison is so appropriate.

FOX NETWORK: TRUTH TAKES A HOLIDAY.
The Real Royal King

BatBoy said:
She should have blown something up…that would have made those old lefties happy!

That’s pretty much a tool of the right these days.

FOX NETWORK: TRUTH TAKES A HOLIDAY.
timzank

King, are you gonna tag all your posts with that fox news line like you always call palin the drop out governor in the hopes of changing hearts and minds?

How soon do you graduate anyway? You can’t stay in high school your whole life can you?
The Real Royal King

timzank said:
King, are you gonna tag all your posts with that fox news line like you always call palin the drop out governor in the hopes of changing hearts and minds?

How soon do you graduate anyway? You can’t stay in high school your whole life can you?

FAIR AND BALANCED is already taken, although it seems to have a vastly different meaning than it did Tuesday.

FOX NETWORK: TRUTH TAKES A HOLIDAY.
timzank

The Real Royal King said:
FAIR AND BALANCED is already taken, although it seems to have a vastly different meaning than it did Tuesday. FOX NETWORK: TRUTH TAKES A HOLIDAY.

I’ll take that as a yes. Jesus you are annoying.
tatboy

“Rachel, I served with Walter Cronkite, I knew Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite was a friend of mine. Rachel, you’re no Walter Cronkite.”
notsofast

Did Rachel Maddow Miss Her Walter Cronkite Moment?”

What, she was going to grow a mustache?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Steven-Andrew-Miller/500434909 Steven Andrew Miller

This theory has a major problem, aside from that it would be “preaching to the choir.”. The so-called “Cronkite moment” never happened.

Yes, Cronkite went to Vietnam and said what he said, but there is no evidence that it had any effect on LBJ. The “if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America” line comes from a book written more than a decade after Cronkite’s trip to Vietnam, and is not published as a quote. There is no evidence, from White House records, that LBJ ever saw the broadcast, and more importantly, Johnson gave two pro-war speeches after the segment had aired.

The “Cronkite moment” is a complete media fabrication, designed to inflate influence of journalists.

http://www.slate.com/id/2254490
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Westover/1496648721 Tony Westover

Meenal Vamburkar said:
MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow recently visited Afghanistan — and anchored her show from the country — to find out what was really going on and to see for herself whether we’re fighting a losing battle. Fair enough.

Actually, no, it’s not fair at all. Rachel Maddow is a hack commentator, not a military strategist. A dumb MSNBC talking head isn’t going to crack the nut that is Afghanistan by going over there for a week and being escorted everywhere. All that will get is ratings, and it didn’t even really do that since nobody watches her show in the first place.
felixw

Maddow is in a bind on Afghanistan, much like President Obama himself. Obama ran for the Democrat nomination by trying to position himself as more anti-Iraq-war than Hilary Clinton. But when he got the nomination he didn’t want to look like a total pacifist in his fall campaign against McCain. So he concocted this position — really as a rhetorical stance rather than as a well-thought out foreign policy view — that the real military emphasis needed to be in Afghanistan. I even recall him boasting how, if he had been President, he would have found Osama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains. Blah, blah, blah….

Fast forward two years later, Obama needs to maintain his public stance of defeating terrorism in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the success of the Bush surge in Iraq has completely taken that issue off the front burner. For someone like Maddow, who worships at the shrine of Obama, this puts her in the uncomfortable position of having to play patsy on her Afghan reporting, and without an ideological angle to play on her Iraq reporting.

My advice to Maddow and Obama: stop worrying about constructing the right narrative for public consumption and actually focus on advocating policies that are in America’s best interest. Yes, that’s right, America’s best interests — a phrase that you will rarely hear coming out of the mouths of liberals. But I am confident that my advice will fall on deaf ears on the Left, where framing the narrative is the chief concern of all parties, both inside and outside of government.