Cronkite for Vice President?

By Thoms Griffith

When the conversation shifts from what a limited choice there is among presidential candidates, Walter Cronkite is one of the names that always turn up as for-instance alternatives. Eight years ago, he was one of ten possible vice-presidential running mates listed by Democrat George McGovern. Last week the New Republic quoted him as saying he would be honored if asked to accept a similar spot on Republican John Anderson's independent ticket. Obviously such a remark must have given CBS fits, putting in jeopardy in the midst of the campaign its star anchorman's reputation for neutrality. Cronkite, off on a sailing holiday, said he had been "misinterpreted." The stir makes a point: as the man the country trusts most to bring it the news, Cronkite seems to have a calm and sensible response to events. What if he were put in charge of them?

Unthinkable? Less so in an era when a movie actor and a peanut farmer are front runners for the presidency. "Oh, yes, I've daydreamed about it," Cronkite says. "As I've daydreamed about sailing around the world--or rather, not as much, because I have thought of sailing around the world."

His thinking goes like this: "Obviously anybody in any profession has a perfect right to get into politics. But one shouldn't as a journalist serve two masters. There's a basic conflict of interest--it's a bad idea. I've been approached by both sides. Some are sincere, but others are flatly cynical, wanting to take advantage of a name that requires no buildup, no posters. Popularity on TV might have great appeal, but I don't have any policy on how to run the country."

Cronkite retires as an anchorman in 1981. He considers himself independent, has never registered as Republican or Democrat, and doesn't always vote. "I'm not totally pleased if people find me more trustworthy than others--that's what we're all about in this business," he says. Besides, the trustworthiness is in the impartiality: "As soon as you start to delineate your positions, you'd start to lose them. Another factor: I know I can't make compromises to suit the people that would put me up, that I'd have taken money from." Even so, he is tempted. Unlike most political reporters he thinks campaigning, and the plaudits that come with it, would be fun, and that "it might be interesting to serve in the United States Senate, for instance." He adds with a familiar grin: "Don't think because I'm such a glib talker on the subject that I've considered it a lot."

Cronkite as candidate would be a case of choosing character over known views. He belongs at the neuter end of journalism. Any editorial writer or Washington columnist, thundering away anonymously at his typewriter and exuding no charisma at all, feels it his bounden duty to have firm views about inflation, Iran, energy and Israel. Basically, Cronkite delivers the news and makes radio commentaries, not all of which he writes himself. Cronkite performs in the language that Columnist Charles McCabe of the San Francisco Chronicle calls Safespeak, a pudding of bland consensus wording that anchormen become practiced in. When Cronkite interviews, he doesn't try to top a guest with superior arguments but simply seeks to draw him out, pierce his evasions, make him explain himself. Such self-restraint can come at the expense of firming up one's own conclusions on any subject. Cronkite agrees: "The very constraint against taking positions is a mark of the professional in journalism, not letting opinions impact on reporting. I've spent a lifetime suppressing them." His one conspicuous expression of opinion came in 1968 on a trip to Indochina, where he went public with his disenchantment with the war, a switch made more dramatic because of his previous reputation as an avuncular pro-Establishment patriot.

A lifetime spent professionally in not taking decided views might seem to disqualify him from becoming a politician who must conceive of programs and argue them forcefully. But Cronkite has a remedy for anchorman's blandness: "That's why I make speeches. It forces me into putting my thoughts on paper." Just a way to keep in training at having thoughts of his own. These are the ruminations of a man fascinated by politics and ready to consider it as a second career--but not yet.

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