Rather had been a disaster waiting to happen from the moment he took over the “Evening News” anchor desk from Walter Cronkite some 23 years ago. The appoint-ment itself was bitterly criticized at the time by the veteran journalists who’d made CBS News the envy of the industry and who, almost without exception, expected the respected CBS mainstay Roger Mudd to fill Cronkite’s shoes.
By the time he assumed the “Evening News” anchorship in 1981, Rather was a seasoned reporter who’d spent years covering the White House before joining “60 Minutes” in 1975 as a correspondent and co-editor. But something always seemed to be off-kilter about him, as Peter Boyer made abundantly clear in his wonderfully readable 1988 book Who Killed CBS?
“There was,” wrote Boyer, “to Dan Rather a kind of innate vehemence, a quality that tempted crackpots to stalk him, prompted strangers to accost him, and urged cabbies to drive wildly through city streets with him screaming for help in the back seat. Things happened to Dan Rather, odd things, mysterious things, sometimes frightening things. And through the years Rather’s actions caused embarrassments and controversies that baffled those around him….”
In the years since Boyer’s book, Rather has done nothing to put to rest the vexing question of why CBS has continued to employ him – and at quite an astronomical salary. After all, Rather’s ratings have been such a constant headache for CBS that at one point in the mid-90’s his bosses forced him to share his anchor title with the preposterous Connie Chung.
The portents of Rather’s tragicomic run as successor to Cronkite were there literally from the start, according to Boyer’s priceless account:
“It was Saturday, March 7, 1981, the dawn of life after Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather, who had been given the astonishing sum of $22 million to sit in Cronkite’s chair, didn’t want to sit in Cronkite’s chair.
“… Rather was to make his historic debut on Monday, so on Saturday he came to the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan’s West Fifty-seventh Street, where he met Sanford Socolow, the executive producer of the “Evening News,” and Burton Benjamin, the vice president in charge of the broadcast, for a series of run-throughs to get ready for the big event.
“… Rather, in coat and tie, had makeup applied and his hair patted and combed into place and went to Cronkite’s desk to read the news. But he wouldn’t sit down. – “I’d like to try this standing up,” he said…. So he tried reading the news standing up, and when that wasn’t quite right, a barstool was appropriated from somewhere, and Rather tried that a couple of times. Then he thought he should try making an “entrance,” and he sort of strolled over to the anchor desk, and that wasn’t quite right either. They went through it all over and over, standing and sitting and strolling, again and again.
“… [H]e stood and sat and strolled late into the night, and he was back on Sunday. Finally Monday arrived, and Rather neither sat nor strolled nor stood. He made his debut as the permanent anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in a kind of squat, a contortion that was awkward just to watch…. He looked as if he were getting ready to run off somewhere, as, in retrospect, might have seemed a good option.”