Dan Rather, American Nightmare
He seems to love Bill Clinton so much that white is black.

By Tim Graham, White House correspondent for World magazine & former director of media analysis at Media Research Center
May 21, 2001 11:10 a.m.

hat was Dan Rather thinking when he decided to go on Fox's O'Reilly Factor? Was he so desperate to sell a few

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more copies of his idealistic $25 book on The American Dream that he was willing to lower himself to suggesting that honesty is an ideal that doesn't really mean anything to him?

Rather's unforgettable "Notable Quotable" spilled out when Bill O'Reilly asked him point blank if he thought Bill Clinton was an honest man. This is roughly comparable to asking if hippos are skinny, or if hurricanes build houses, or to descend into Ratherisms, if that Zesto stand in Huntsville, Texas makes a mean creme brulee. This is not a tough question. But Rather seems to love Bill Clinton so much that white is black: "I think at core he's an honest person. I know that you have a different view. I know that you consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."

This could be the perfect summation for historians of the liberal media's attitude of the Clinton years, on several levels. First, the media decided they could be as brazen as their baby-boomer idol. There is no way to read Rather's statement except as an a) mysterious drug-addled episode of incoherence or b) a cynical judgment that all that really matters in politics is perception, not reality, and whatever the Potentates of Perception declare to be true is as good as true.

Part of that shtick came in Rather's false generosity — "I know that you consider it astonishing anybody would say so." That sounds a little like the Clinton White House line, that always suggested that yes, there was another, well, loopy point of view that insists on a ridiculously rigid standard of honesty, but they are merely obsessed haters out to destroy anyone who could make America great after the country was ravaged by Reagan and Gingrich.

Rather also suggested this line when O'Reilly brought Juanita Broaddrick into the conversation. The most relevant line on this story to Rather wasn't whether Broaddrick's claims of rape were true, but the conspiracy behind her:

What you've got is you have the Republicans trying to bring down Bill Clinton. I think it was an organized campaign. And unfortunately for Bill Clinton and the country some of it turned out to be true. Now, in that environment we're going to be careful. We're going to be very, very careful…. My attitude is always, show me, you bring me documented evidence, you bring me some eyewitness testimony and by the way I'll be out there trying to find some on my own if it's a serious charge. We'll be sending our reporters out trying to find it. But I'm not going to be party to reporting the news the way somebody with a special political or ideological pleading wants it to be reported.

The only problem with Rather's argument is what really happened at CBS on the Broaddrick story. He seems to think investigating it or sending out reporters is pandering to Republican pressure groups. (It's easily said that Rather had no resistance to pressure groups when the accuser was Anita Hill.) Broaddrick's story of sexual assault was merely a skunk in the middle of the road to be driven around and ignored. When her interview surfaced on Dateline in 1999, Rather publicly declared that he didn't like the story and hoped it would vanish.

But the key Rather sentence is "unfortunately for Bill Clinton and the country, some of it turned out to be true." The truth of his dishonesty was not only unfortunate for Clinton, but also unfortunate for the country to which he was apparently indispensable. In that environment of serious sexual charges, Rather was "careful" only about the anti-Clinton accusations, not with Clinton's crumbling credibility in denying any affair with a woman, voluntary or involuntary. Rather's silence and inaction is in stark contrast to the Walter Cronkite notion of reporting the news and letting the chips fall where they may.

But Rather was slow or silent on stories of a less sexual nature as well, which even he now will admit. When O'Reilly began by pointing out how apathetic Rather and his fellow anchormen were on uncovering Clinton donations from Indonesia and China, that no network clamored to interview Charles LaBella or Johnny Chung, Rather conceded, "the criticism of, okay, you weren't tough enough on Clinton, didn't do enough investigative reporting, I accept that criticism. I think it's overstated. What I don't accept is that there's a left bias, a liberal bias. I know you disagree with that." O'Reilly insisted, "No, I don't. No, I said, I think it is an exclusionary bias, rather than an ideological bias." Rather replied: "Alright, I appreciate that." Rather was comfortable suggesting that the networks failed to explain coherently how the Democrats had taken money from a foreign power because the news is so corporate now, and the news budget is so tight. He wouldn't accept that the reason was liberal bias.

Admitting that Clinton coverage wasn't exactly complete is a positive step. It doesn't really matter whether the blame is assigned to calculating newsroom ideologues or corporate distaste for Washington news at the expense of pandering "news about you." (The correct answer is both.)

What does matter is that our national media revere the ideal of honesty, even if it seems like a difficult ideal to find in the heat of dueling spins and perception policing. As a whole, the media put that ideal in a box for Bill Clinton, sharing his passion for compartmentalization. Honesty was saved for a compartment titled "Won't Go There." For all his usual talk-show bluster of Mr. Breaks In When the News Breaks Out, Dan Rather has been revealed as a man who believes honesty is overrated, and that he was willing to sit on any story that might show that the truth is "unfortunate for Clinton and the country."