So unoriginal.
Hardly exceptional.
Those are ways to characterize Walter Cronkite's famous assessment–offered in a special televised report in February 1968–that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”
Cronkite's characterization supposedly represented a moment of such stunning clarity and insight that it forced President Lyndon Johnson to realize his war policy was a shambles.
“If I've lost Cronkite,” Johnson supposedly said to an aide or aides after seeing the special report, “I've lost Middle America.”
Or words to that effect.
And a month later, Johnson announced he was not running for election–a decision often linked, if erroneously, to Cronkite's “mired in stalemate” analysis about Vietnam.
Read Full Article »
