Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Walter Cronkite

  • Lessons from Hiroshima, 60 Years Later

    The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago were stunning and sobering events. They brought World War II to an end, and everyone was thankful for that. Not too many of us stopped to think about the full implications of those bombs for our future. We were too busy celebrating the end of that terrible war.

    One of the people who had it absolutely right at the very beginning about the meaning of Hiroshima was the great French writer Albert Camus. He wrote in a French resistance newspaper: “Our technological civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.” We are still facing that choice.

    Both the US and the USSR tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere until the early 1960s, while they continued to create more efficient weapons. It didn’t take either country long to get those weapons on intercontinental ballistic missiles and then submarine-launched ballistic missiles. They created a situation in which the world could be destroyed in a matter of minutes. This threat of a massive nuclear exchange was thought to provide an ad hoc policy to prevent nuclear war. It was called the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, for which the acronym was M.A.D. or MAD. Never was an acronym more accurately descriptive.

    We came very close to a nuclear exchange between Washington and Moscow in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a very frightening time, and we can all be thankful that sanity managed to prevail. There were high-ranking US officials at the time who were pressing for bombing Cuba, which would have meant a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. That was one of many close calls during the Cold War.

    With the end of the Cold War, there seemed to be a real chance again to put nuclear dangers behind us, and once again the opportunity was largely missed. Today, in the 60th year of the Nuclear Age, we still have some 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and some 4,000 of these are on hair-trigger alert. You have to wonder about a species that seems so incapable of eliminating the greatest danger to its own survival. Not so incidentally, the United States has more nuclear weapons in its arsenal than any other nation.

    There has been much emphasis in the news about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in such countries as North Korea. All countries should abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Few Americans are aware, however, that the treaty also provides that the US and other nuclear-weapons states must reduce their numbers of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, disarmament by nuclear-weapons states receives limited attention in news reporting, at least within the United States. I think this might be because the continuing existence of our own vast arsenal doesn’t seem to Americans, even if they are aware of it, to be nearly as dangerous as the threat of new nations acquiring the ghastly weapons.

    The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the hibakusha — have continually warned, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.” In the end, I believe this is the most important lesson of Hiroshima. We must eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.

    The best security, perhaps the only security, against nuclear weapons being used again, or getting into the hands of terrorists, is to eliminate them. Most of the people of the world already know this. Now it is up to the world’s people to impress the urgency of this situation upon their governments. We must act now. The future depends upon us.

    Anything less would be to abandon our responsibility to future generations.

    Walter Cronkite is an eminent broadcast journalist and serves on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council. He was anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962-1981, and currently hosts “Lessons from Hiroshima, 60 Years Later,” now airing on public radio stations nationwide.

  • Cronkite: Media Failing on Nuclear Stories

    United Nations – When it comes to reporting on nuclear arms, the U.S. news media let readers and viewers down, giving them only part of the story, former news anchor Walter Cronkite said Wednesday.

    The celebrated CBS retiree, joining in a panel discussion on the sidelines of a U.N. conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, said narrow reporting means the U.S. public is “largely unaware” that the 1970 treaty obliges their government to move toward full nuclear disarmament.

    “There’s been a lot in the news about nonproliferation,” Cronkite said, referring to Iran and North Korea, whose nuclear programs, under fire from the U.S. government, make daily headlines.

    “But, unfortunately, the nuclear disarmament obligations of the nuclear weapons states receive far less attention in news reporting, at least in our United States,” he said.

    Another panelist, Marian Hobbs, New Zealand’s minister for disarmament, also criticized media coverage of arms control.

    “We need the media. We want a media that informs us of other people’s opinions, not just American opinion, or your country’s opinion,” she told the international audience.

    Under the nonproliferation treaty, more than 180 countries commit to not pursuing nuclear arms, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear powers — the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China — to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.

    North Korea has announced its withdrawal from the pact and says it has built nuclear weapons. Washington contends Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is meant to produce electricity, is a cover for plans to build weapons.

    Nonweapons states, on the other hand, complain increasingly that U.S. actions, such as talk of building new nuclear arms, run counter to treaty obligations.

    Cronkite agreed.

    “It simply seems the United States and other nuclear weapons states are actually trying to evade their obligations and responsibilities under the treaty,” he said, adding that he visited Hiroshima after the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of that Japanese city and since then has been “a campaigner to get rid of every nuclear weapon.”

    Walter Cronkite is an eminent broadcast journalist and recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2004 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • An Eleventh Hour Succession for the Kerry Campaign

    It is a little late but there is still time for John Kerry and the Democratic party to offer the electorate a genuine alternative to a continuation of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

    The Kerry proposal might go like this:

    We cannot afford the continuing, even increasing, loss of life among American troops, nor the financial drain which is piling high the national debt and denying us the funds to improve the nation’s education, public health and repair to our crumbling infrastructure of highways, bridges, dams and mines.

    The Bush administration promises nothing but more of the same. It talks of another four or five years of war. This is madness. The only way out now is to admit that the Bush policies, that the invasion of Iraq, were terrible mistakes. We must acknowledge our chagrin, our embarrassment in admitting that our policies, our military intervention was a mistake. We must extend our apologies to those we misled and who suffered our rashness and our mistakes. This is not cowardly but is the courageous and honorable thing for us to do.

    My administration’s first move will be to name a panel of military experts from those retired top officers who from the beginning have criticized the Iraqi war, the administration’s lack of planning and the use of its limited forces.

    This panel would plan the immediate withdrawal of our forces in Iraq with the goal of bringing the last soldier home within six months. A portion of those soldiers who wish to volunteer, would be sent on to bolster our forces in the real war against the terrorists in Bin Laden’s home ground of Afghanistan.

    The rest of the brave and courageous troops, who bear the great brunt but none of the responsibility for the failure of the Bush Iraqi policy, will be welcomed home as the heroes they are. The bands will play and the people will cheer as they parade down the Broadways and Main Streets of America’s cities.

    Those thousand and more who have given their lives in this lost cause will never be forgotten by a grateful nation. They should get their own memorial aside those of other wars on the Washington mall.

    And those other thousands maimed as they did their duty will be honored and not forgotten. Special programs will help them become useful citizens and will assure their financial support the rest of their lives. Those returning soldiers who do not wish to remain in the regular armed forces will be given full educational opportunities similar to the GI Bill for World War Two veterans.

    For those professional people and self-employed who were called up with their National Guard and Reserve units- and held overseas overlong- we will provide financial help for them to resume their pre­Iraq careers.

    As for the Iraq government, we will extend it limited help in supplying its armed forces. We will leave behind for it billions of dollars of military equipment – to the degree that our military panel believes it will be useful.

    However, our financial aid to Iraq will primarily be on the humanitarian side. We will supply bounteous funds to aid in the restoration of housing and vital services, most particularly hospitals and other medical facilities. These funds will be administered by the American Red Cross and other such organizations to isolate them from any U.S. political interests.

    We will declare a new policy toward Iraq. We will not pretend a dominant role there. Our representation will be the normal peacetime embassy. We will clearly proclaim our abandonment of any suggestion that we seek to profiteer in the nation’s rebuilding. We shall make that clear by not only welcoming but urging the nations that once were prominent in Iraq’s economy to return without any interference from the United States. If our industry wishes to invest there, it will be in fair competition with the interests of other nations.

    If the United States is to share in Iraq’s oil treasure it will do so with clearly recognized and enforced federal rules that ensure our fair and honest participation.

    This revolution in our Iraq policy will be accompanied, of course, by a redefinition of our general foreign policy. The Democratic administration will not totally abandon the Bush policy of preemptive war against a threatening nation. The growing profusion of nuclear and biologic weapons of mass destruction conceivably could justify such action. But this administration would rebuild, with the programs outlined above ­its alliance with our long-time friends overseas whose confidence in us was destroyed by the Bush administration’s arrogant and nearly solitary aggression. Having regained the faith and trust the world once bestowed upon us, we also will hasten to repair the damage our solo performance in Iraq caused to the prestige of the United Nations. We will lead in strengthening it as the one body that could establish and enforce world peace.

    This policy – the Kerry promise would note – is the answer to the Bush administration’s policy that promises only the continued waste of so much American and Iraqi blood and the waste of billions of dollars that will be denied to the strengthening of America and the recovery of Iraq.

  • 21st Annual Evening for Peace: Broadcasting Peace: A Conversation with Walter Cronkite

    The following is a transcript of the live interview conducted by Sam Donaldson with Walter Cronkite, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2004 Distinguished Peace Leader.

    Sam Donaldson with Walter Cronkite at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 21st Evening for Peace

    Donaldson: I must tell you that for many of us, without meaning any disrespect to the people now doing the CBS Evening News, it will always be the Cronkite Show. Here was the leader with a bunch of correspondents that couldn’t be touched, I know because we tried to compete against him, and Robert Pierpoint who was here earlier tonight. He was one of the great horsemen that Walter depended upon on that show. Let’s get down to business. I hear people say that this is the most important election of our lifetime. Is it? What do you make of its importance?

    Cronkite: I think it’s more important than our lifetime. I would think that this election is perhaps the most important in the last century, going back to perhaps the Civil War.

    Donaldson: You have to explain that. Why?

    Cronkite: I expect to. Why is because we have taken a 180 degree turn in our policy and foreign policy. We have adopted this incredible decision as announced by the president in his announcement of our policy future, which is a compulsory thing they have to do every couple of years. And he announced the system of preemption. With this preemption and the unilateral nature of it, as practiced by the administration very shortly thereafter, we have established a foreign policy that is unsustainable in a world that we hope will be governed by peace rather than war. As a consequence, we are on a very, very dangerous course for not only the United States but for civilization. The suggestion that one should take preemptive action if that nation believes that it is threatened by a neighbor, for heaven’s sakes, that may sound possible to sustain if you are a dominant nation such as the United States . But what do you do if you translate that same program to one of the African neighbor nations, to one of the Middle Eastern neighbor nations? As soon as you sense that you are endangered by your neighbor, you are therefore entitled, because the United States has established this wonderful concept, you are therefore entitled to go to war. What kind of a future is that for the world? It is incredibly impossible to sustain that kind of a foreign policy around the world among all the nations of the world that are entitled because of our leadership, to say, well, the United States does it, why can’t we do it?

    Donaldson: Well, the president says it’s us against them, that we live in a dangerous world, we must defend ourselves and we’re gonna divide the world up between those who support our policy and those who don’t. Those who support us will be our allies, and those who don’t will pay the piper.

    Cronkite: I’d say that’s one hell of a way to behave to those who believe with us, to tell them that either you’re with us or against us – either you accept what we say we will do or you cannot be part of the game. That hardly seems to me to be a foreign policy that is very practical of long endurance. It may suffice for a moment, but it’s not going to live very long in the history of our universe.

    Donaldson: Walter, do you think we are safer or less safe because our strike against Iraq ?

    Cronkite: Far less safe.

    Donaldson: Why?

    Cronkite: Because as we read every day in the press and occasionally hear on television-

    Donaldson: We’ll get to that.

    Cronkite: I thought you would, so I thought I’d preempt you. The problem quite clearly is that we have excited the Arab world, the Muslim world, to take up arms against us, far beyond what was being done by Al-Qaeda and others, of the terrorist groups. We have created a new body of importance in the terrorist groups who are coalescing around the Iraqi situation.

    Donaldson: The president said in that famous State of the Union message in which he described the axis of evil that the United States would not stand idly by and permit nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction that threaten us, which suggests that maybe if the president maintains political power that we will then have to move against Iran. Maybe North Korea . What do you think?

    Walter Cronkite at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 21st Evening for Peace

    Cronkite: That is precisely the course that he has set. Actually, the truth of the matter is we do not have the military strength to take on Iran and North Korea simultaneously or even separately at this point. We have committed nearly all of the forces we have available to this enterprise in Iraq . For heaven’s sakes. This argument about a draft. That this administration would dare to assert that there is no draft in their thinking. That’s got to be an absolutely straight out lie, one of many that they have made. We cannot continue the Iraq war as it is quite clearly going to continue for quite a while and expect to be prepared to move on Iran , to move on North Korea , to even have this vaunted security and safety at home without a draft. We don’t have that kind of power in our military today. And we are being lied to when we are being told there is no thought of a draft in the Pentagon.

    Donaldson: Well, it won’t be the first time we’ve been lied to by various presidents, now, Walter. It’s nothing new.

    Cronkite: Well, yes, but do we really have time to go into that?

    Donaldson: No. I’m not asking for a litany of lies. All right. How could the administration have so badly miscalculated after we got to Baghdad in less than three and a half weeks, militarily, from the standpoint of trying to then move forward to do something in Iraq that would bring it out all right? How come they didn’t know anything about the Middle East ?

    Cronkite: I wish the hell I knew the answer to that. That’s one of the questions we have every right to ask and you’re just the guy to ask it.

    Donaldson: Well, it’s easy to ask questions. But a lot of people say, fine, if they thought they wanted to do this, they did not prepare. I’m borrowing a Kerry line, I suppose. Or maybe he stole it from you. They did not prepare for the peace. They had no plan after that. They made miscalculations, did they not? And so at the point we’re at now, answer the fundamental question: We’re hip deep in the big muddy once again, as Lyndon Johnson’s time showed: how do we get out?

    Cronkite: The program that I have proposed through the Democrats-I say that with, I hope everybody understands, my tongue in my cheek. I’m working both sides. My tongue is in both cheeks. I wrote a column about it and it didn’t get printed anywhere, but it was a great column. I proposed what I would like to hear the Democratic candidate say. My proposal was that he would say that one of the first steps he would take upon moving into the Oval Office, besides changing the furniture around a bit, would be to organize a panel of retired generals who have come out during the various discussions of the Iraq War against what has been going on in Iraq, the entire lack of planning, inadequate number of troops, all of the things that these retired generals have come on television to report on. He would organize this panel and would tell them he wanted their plan for us to get out of Iraq with honor, to get our troops home and to have them do this within the next six months. I can imagine, I would say if I were the candidate, what would happen in America as those boys and girls came home. Every Broadway, every Main Street would be festooned with American flags. We would welcome those boys and girls back in every town and community of America . They would be honored as they’ve never been honored before. But more than that, we’d be sure that everyone of those people would be entitled to an education that we would pay for to help pay them back for their service. Furthermore, we would supply a fund so that every professional person serving in the reserve, in the National Guard, who was called up and lost his practice in the law or dentistry or whatever would get financial help to restore that practice he had when he went away. Every businessman, every single small businessman who lost his business because he was called up and kept there longer than he should have been kept anyway, that individual would get financial help. I would put these people back on their feet because they’re entitled to it.

    But we would go further than that, of course. We would then begin to put together the codicil for peace that this nation would follow in the future. And that codicil for peace would be a vastly different thing than our present foreign policy. The very first thing we would do would be to reverse 180 degrees our attitude towards the United Nations. We would put our full force behind the United Nations. We would do everything we can to bring the United Nations into the position of power that it should have. We are going to have to someday in the attempt to make an international organization of this kind work. Our only real hope of establishing a lasting peace is that such an organization will work. That would mean the United Nations would have legislative power, judicial power and military power to say this is the road to peace and we will hold peace. Now that is going to require-I see your tongue moving toward your check.

    Donaldson: Towards my mouth, my lips.

    Cronkite: But let me say what that requires. I know what it requires and you know what it requires, and you’re about to hang me with it. What this requires is an understanding of the American people that we can only assure world peace through an international organization if we are willing to surrender some of our sovereignty.

    Donaldson: You’re right, Walter, you guessed my question. Both candidates, not just President Bush, but Senator Kerry, say in almost the same words, “I will never give another nation veto power over the security of the United States.” And the crowds cheer. So how are you going to convince the American people that we should in fact obey the rule of international law?

    Cronkite: As with almost everything else to be solved with our national being and for world peace, it’s going to require a lot of education. We begin with that. We’ve got to improve our educational system to the degree that we have a literate society to which you can appeal with a reasonable argument rather than the passion of the moment or the passion of the past that has to be preserved. That won’t work. We have to have a revolutionary change. You know, Tom Jefferson, old Tom said at one time that the nation that expects to be ignorant and free, expects what never can and never will be. We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that we cannot function well as a democracy.

    Donaldson: And that is a terrific segue to our business. We have distinguished members of the educational community here with great universities and all that. But our business, the news business, tap into it. Are we helping in this process that you describe today?

    Cronkite: No. We’re not participating in it at all.

    Donaldson: What happened to us?

    Cronkite: Well, what happened was cable. Not actually what the cable people are doing, but the fact that there is such a profusion today of various cable channels and cable stations that they have drastically reduced the audience for the traditional networks, that is, the old timers NBC, ABC, CBS. They have so reduced their income that they do not dare to do anything except the cheapest kind of entertainment programming. And they will not give an adequate amount of time or consideration in any other way to informing the American people of the problems of our time. They’re not helping to educate the people in any way. Now, that is in parallel, if you will, with the failure of our educational system. We have now wasted so much money with cutting the tax rates of the rich in this country that we do not have enough money left to be sure that no child is left behind. We’ve got so many children left behind today, it’s unbelievable. We’re not able to build the schoolhouses that are needed, but most of all we’re not able to pay our teachers what they deserve. These are the people we have employed to raise this educational level of the American people to the degree that we do not fall to Thomas Jefferson’s forecast; that we are an intelligent people that can understand the issues of the day and vote accordingly. We are in a position today that we cannot do that job. We literally cannot pay teachers what they’re worth. Now, where do we go from here? I hope you’re not going to ask me the next question, where do we go from here?

    Donaldson: Where do we go from here, Walter? Where do we go from here, Walter? Answer the question!

    Cronkite: Well, God knows. And unfortunately, since only God knows, that means only Bush knows.

    Donaldson: Remember this. Someone once said, God takes care of fools, drunks and the United States of America .

    Cronkite: And perhaps the Democratic party.

    Donaldson: Well, let’s cover that point. You wrote earlier this year in a column about the political campaign, and you said religion ought not to be an issue in the political campaign.

    Cronkite: Absolutely.

    Donaldson: But it is.

    Cronkite: Of course it is. It’s being exploited very successfully, I’m afraid, by the Republican party, and the group of evangelicals who have helped finance this effort to make religion an issue in the campaign, in the election.

    Donaldson: You don’t think God favors one party over the other, that God gets into the tax code? Maybe he has an exemption there, who know?

    Cronkite: I used to think that God took part in contests at one time or another, until the Boston team won a couple of nights ago.

    Sam Donaldson at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 21st Evening for Peace

    Donaldson: David Krieger said that our job is to tell the truth, bring the truth to people. But when we attempt to do that by fact checking ads, by fact checking what candidates say, we’re accused of being partisan, we’re accused of getting into the contest. What do you think our job is? How should we handle a political contest like what’s going on today?

    Cronkite: I think you’ll agree with me almost immediately. I dodge the question in a sense. We are never going to be able to do it unless the networks, and I’m talking about our traditional networks again, give us enough time to devote to information transmission to the people. Those half-hour evening news programs, as you know only too well, are vastly inadequate. After the commercials, the lead-ins, the lead-outs and all that, we’ve got something like 16 or 17 minutes at the most. We’ve got one of the most complicated nations in the world with our vast numbers of special interests across our broad nation. We are presumably a great leader of a world that is incredibly complex today, more than probably any time in recent history at any rate. And to think that we can tell just the essentials that happen in that world, that domestic world, that international world, in 16 minutes is ridiculous. We can’t do it. Now then, you and I for all of our careers with our networks have hoped for prime time. We are in this mixed time, evening time from 6:00 to 6:30. We all wished for years for prime time in which to do news or documentaries. We finally got it three or four years ago. So what do we do with these magazine shows? Sex, crime, the oddball events of the world. Nothing serious in those programs. What would happen if our networks would devote those magazine prime time magazine hours that they do to instant documentaries? Suppose that you have got the headlines at 6:30 and you came up with 60 Minutes Wednesday night for an hour and at that time, by golly, you saw a documentary and a panel of experts and so forth that would explore the problem that we revealed at 6:30. We would advise this nation, we would educate this nation in a manner in which it has never been educated before. We would use television the way people dreamed that television would be used when we first had the tubes on the market.

    Donaldson: I’m with you, Walter, but you know what would happen is the bottom line network bosses, the people who own us now, would say, “We can’t put that on because we won’t get a mass audience. Someone over here has gotten hold of the Paris Hilton tape and put it on and that’s where all the eyeballs are.”

    Cronkite: That’s exactly what they’d say.

    Donaldson: That’s exactly what they are saying.

    Cronkite: Not only would they say it, they’d do it.

    Donaldson: But you’re talking about the evening news. I remember where in the fall of 1972, you did two long Watergate stories two nights in a row, 7, 8, 9 minutes apiece. That doesn’t happen anymore. Why not?

    Cronkite: Well, that gets into a more difficult problem. I don’t know the why not because it could be done. We did those two programs, one on Friday night and one on Monday night and, actually, they were even longer than 6 or 7 minutes each. They were 17 minutes, one of them, the first one, Friday night. This was my concept. This was just before the election of that year and Watergate had been in all the headlines for three or four months and then it had suddenly died out because that’s the way stories work for the press. We had told all of it. The Washington Post team had not come up with any new revelations. Deep Throat, if there was one (I won’t start that argument), hadn’t come up with anything. As a consequence, as things work in the press, the story moved from the front page to page 3 to page 7 to page 9 to the comic page with a two liner, and I was determined that we were going to remind the American people of the Watergate story before we went to the polls a couple of months later. So we put together this review of Watergate and we went deep into the documentary type stuff. We put together and made a pretty good piece out of it. The problem was, of course, that we put it out on a Friday and practically before we were off the air, the White House – the group who had done all of this, Nixon’s group – was on the phone to Bill Paley, the chairman and owner of CBS, and was demanding that we abandon the Monday piece and, a matter of fact, they wanted a special done to correct the mistakes we had made in the piece we had done. Paley, of course, panicked, I would say, for the moment and called Dick Salant, the head of CBS News who was a brilliant man.

    Donaldson: Lawyer, good lawyer.

    Cronkite: Oh, terrific, terrific. He had to listen to Paley, of course, and Paley was saying you have to do something about this, the White House is on us, it’s very difficult, you can’t do that Monday piece. Salant was saying, well, I’ll work on it, I’ll work on it. Meanwhile Frank Stanton was calling and others were calling. The pressure was on. Salant, being as brilliant as he was, when he came to us, he came to us from the counsel’s office at CBS. Eric Severeid and all of us practically were going to quit because we thought that the management was sending in this lawyer who was going to suppress us and only be the spokesman for management. He turned out to be the greatest journalist I’d ever known in his sense of honesty, integrity and telling the full story regardless of where the chips fell. He was a tremendous man.

    Donaldson: So even though you had to cut it down, you did run the second piece?

    Cronkite: What happened was that Salant was smart enough to compromise and he called Paley and he said we’ve taken care of it, Mr. Paley. We’re gonna cut the length of the piece on Monday. Well, we did. We cut a few minutes out of a long piece, but Paley was satisfied with that and was able to answer the White House by saying, “We’re cutting it down on Monday.” That didn’t please the White House, of course. They kept insisting that we had to cancel it. But Paley stood firm on that one.

    Donaldson: I just remember that. Walter, you could spend all evening doing it, but very quickly, handicap the next nine days and if you care to make a predication about who’s going to win, make it.

    Cronkite: I really am not prepared to. I don’t know. I think it’s that close. I can’t remember an election in which I didn’t think I could call it in advance until this year.

    Donaldson: Why is it this close?

    Cronkite: I think it’s this close because there is a huge body of people who would wear the “Anybody but Bush” pin who, at the same time, are not intrigued by Kerry. I don’t think he has made the impression that he needs to make to assure a victory. He’s managed in these three debates to bring himself back to even, almost even, but not overwhelmingly in the lead. I have been disappointed myself in his candidacy. You know, you and I made a lot of comments. I remember some of yours and if I don’t remember them, I’m making them up anyway.

    Donaldson: I’ve made a lot of dumb predictions, if that’s what you mean.

    Cronkite: Not predictions, but we made fun of the fact that we ourselves were talking about charisma being a feature of presidential elections since television came in, that television had changed the whole balance of election campaigning because it injected this feature of charisma.

    Donaldson: Well, it has, hasn’t it?

    Cronkite: It has. And that’s what I was going to say, that we have to invoke that name, that charisma identification in the case of the Democratic candidate. He does not have charisma. That is a difficult thing to overcome and meanwhile, without the charisma that he needs, he has, I think, not done a very good job of campaigning. It took him too long to get away from the litany of mistakes that this administration has made and get down to the program that he himself would substitute. I think that’s what people want to hear. What would he do? And we really still haven’t gotten a very clear picture of the program with which he would come in to the White House.

    Donaldson: But we know the President’s program. Is it a case of better the devil we know than the devil we don’t know, for some people? We know what George W. Bush will do. More of the same.

    Cronkite: I know and I find it hard to believe that there’s anybody that would vote for that.

    Donaldson: Half the country . And with that, would you do something for us that I think everyone in the room would love to have you do one more time. Will you sign off! With your famous sign off!

    Cronkite: And that’s the way it is, Saturday, October 23, 2004. Goodnight.

  • Let Us Think Big and Create a Department of Peace

    2004 Commencement Address at Pomona College

    Quite some years ago I gave a commencement address at Brandeis University which I thought was rather successful — possibly even brilliant. But I received a letter shortly thereafter from a distinguished alumnus of that University. He chastised me for not being more optimistic — for not inspiring the graduates with my hopes for the future into which they were venturing.

    I pondered the criticism and was concerned that I had, somehow let that graduating class down. And then I came to my conclusion: It was certainly true that I had not given them a rousing pep talk but, what the devil — I knew I had spoken the truth as I saw it. The speech was given at the depths of one of the most tortured decades in American history. It was the decade of the 1960’s — almost as divisive as the Civil War a century before — a nation torn by the battles for civil rights and women’s rights — the assassinations, the Vietnam war — an economic slump. There wasn’t much to be optimistic about.

    Well, here we are at Pomona , almost a half century later, and as we look around us, the world into which you are moving doesn’t look very much brighter.

    We are plagued with the Iraq war — a possibly improving economy — but still a tragically large population of unemployed or under-employed — and an environmental crisis that threatens the Earth . Here at home we have a collapsing infrastructure of aging bridges and dams — and a highway system badly in need of repair — and, perhaps worst of all, an inadequate educational system (not including Pomona , of course). Incidentally, those educational failures in our lower schools could be vastly reduced by a wage scale for teachers that would lure more of the best and brightest to the profession. And all of this as we face a national deficit that will hobble us through your generation — and very likely that of your children and even grandchildren.

    We have an administration in Washington that has brought us to this condition — and we have a Democratic candidate presumptive who so far has proposed few remedies that offer any specifics that, to this observer at least, promise the necessary new deal in Washington . On the most critical issue, for instance, surely a Democratic brain trust could come up with a peace plan for Iraq that — at least– would give us hope for a reasonably early dignified withdrawal.

    But the Kerry camp may well have been buffaloed by President Bush’s oft-repeated pledge that we won’t “cut and run” from Iraq . We all – and that includes this speaker – when we hear that – double up our fists and say “right on, right on!”

    Of course we don’t want to be seen as a nation of cowards, abandoning the fight we have started when the going gets tough. But let’s examine the proposition more closely. Nobody has seriously proposed that we “cut and run.” That is purely a jingoistic slogan of an administration intent upon playing the patriotic card to camouflage its lack of a plan to extricate us from its errors.

    Is it possible that the “cut and run” stigma has so intimidated the Democratic candidate that he can’t muster the courage to acknowledge that we must leave Iraq and to offer a plan to expedite the departure with honor?

    If that is a sound analysis — the nation can only hope that Senator Kerry soon regains his political courage and offers the electorate an alternative to the administration’s failed Iraq policy.

    So, with all these problems — am I supposed to stand here today and give you a message of unqualified hope for our immediate future? I’m sorry, but that would be outright dishonest. However, let me now render that inspirational message that is expected of commencement speakers.

    All those problems I enumerated before can be solved — or at least mitigated — by an enlightened population and courageous leadership. You — this class of ’04 — are particularly qualified by the education you have received here, to provide both.

    Almost certainly the problem of the most imminent danger is that of the rising threat of terrorism. Military defense is essential, of course – but equally — or perhaps more important — is the job of removing the source of the terrorists’ increasing strength. That source is the envy and the bitterness that the deprived peoples of the world hold for the richer nations — of which we are the foremost.

    Television, incidentally, is to a large degree, responsible for that state of affairs. Around the globe — in their hovels — the impoverished people watch television. Not infrequently — an entire village gathers around a single set run by a bicycle-powered generator.

    And what do they see? To a large part — reruns of American shows depicting a people who want for nothing – not food, clothing nor shelter — a people who live an opulent life beyond imagination. Can we wonder that the jealousy of those villagers — that their discontent — is fodder for radical leaders / who know only violence as a means to even the scales.

    Some might suggest that the solution is to get rid of television. That possibly has some merit, — but I find it a little difficult to agree. The challenge is to bring hope to the world’s depressed people — and thus diminish this source of their unrest.

    The soldiers in this great campaign to achieve a lasting peace — will be those of your generation. Some of you will serve in the rear echelons – the headquarters of those organizations — eleemosynary and profit-oriented — that will be organizing the building of these capitalist and democratic nations –building the power plants, the railroads, the factories that will provide the economic revolution raising the standard of living around the globe.

    Others of you will choose the more challenging and perhaps more adventuresome roles in the front lines. You will choose the course of volunteerism — a civic function of which we Americans are noteworthy. You will go to the world’s far corners to teach others the American philosophy and know-how. For the most part, by your knowledge — so much of it received right here at Pomona — you will inspire the people of the depressed lands.

    All of you, certainly, have been thinking long and hard of your future careers. Many of you, of course, will go on to advanced degrees in law, medicine, business, education. It is my conviction that you can have both — a period of rewarding public service and a successful professional career.

    In fact, the odds are high that you can gain immensely by participating in the campaign for peace — an experience that will profit you handsomely in the work-a-day world. The glory, though, is in playing an important role in history. I urge you not to believe that this dream of peace — and the way to achieve it — is without reality or a solid foundation.

    You will be among those making a major contribution toward achieving what realists would say is impossible – a permanent peace among the peoples of our globe. I happen to believe we’ve got to put idealism on at least an equal footing with practicality. We’re going to make it, we human beings — if we cling to the belief, — if we work for, bringing to reality the achievement of peace.

    Let us think big. An Orwellian thought perhaps – but why not rename the Department of State – that is a meaningless title anyway – why not make it the Department of Peace , to emphasize the identify of a whole new American effort — a full court press toward a new destiny. That destiny, of course, is the establishment and keeping of the peace.

    If we can appropriate so much of our treasure, — those billions and billions of dollars annually, — in developing more efficient means of killing people — surely we should be able to appropriate funding for an equal effort to keep the peace.

    Success in that noble objective will depend on those of your generation who have had the opportunity of an education that equips you to take a leading role in our future – a role that you may begin, and possibly continue, in the public service of our country. And that could include elective office. The biographies of our future leaders may well include the notation….graduated from Pomona College , 2004.

    There is hope for the future, — and to a great degree it rests with you.

    May you have great success in your future endeavors. We wish that for you, and for the future of America – and all humankind.