“Loosing Middle America,” Walter Cronkite and the Tet Offensive

Background


In November 1967, General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces in South Vietnam, came to Washington in order to reassure Congress about the progress that the United States had made in the ongoing war. He stated “I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1964 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing. . .It is significant that the enemy has not won a battle in more than a year” (Patterson 636). On January 31, the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong guerillas launched a massive offensive that demonstrated that much of America’s military “progress” was largely illusionary.

Walter Cronkite, the anchor of the CBS Evening News and a former combat reporter in World War II, traveled to Vietnam to see for himself what was happening. In a special report on the Tet Offensive, aired on February 27, 1968, Cronkite concluded with what he later described as a “a radical departure from our [at CBS] normal practice,“ an on-air editorial. He described the Vietnam War as locked in a stalemate where a negotiated settlement, was the only way that the war could end.

“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion. . .It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victory, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could” (Cronkite 257-58).

It did influence the President Johnson, however. He told his then-aid Billy Moyers, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America” (Cronkite 258).

Cronkite’s decision coincided with a sharp drop in public support for the President. “In the space of six weeks, between late January and early March of 1968, the percentage of Americans who approved of Johnson’s handling of the Presidency dropped from 48 to 36 percent, while the number of those who supported his handling of the war dropped from 40 to 26 percent” (Kearns Goodwin 336).

Five weeks after the broadcast, on March 31 1968, LBJ announced that he would not seek reelection.

Here is the Film




Discussion

Do you think that Cronkite's opinion piece actually changed Johnson's mind, or simply confirmed the President's own feelings?

When should reporters editorialize based upon their experiences? Did Cronkite "go over the line"?

What would you think of a contemporary anchor on one of the nightly newscasts making a similar statement about the Iraq War? Would that statement have the same impact today as Cronkite's did in 1968?


Sources

Walter Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1996.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976, 1991,
“We Are Mired in Stalemate,” Transcript of Walter Cronkite’s Editorial Comments on February 27, 1968