Guest Post: Roger Mudd Anchors

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

The famous Roger Mudd interview undermined the presidential hopes of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1979. Kennedy later accused him of stumping him to boost his chances of succeeding Walter Cronkite as CBS Anchor. In this alternate scenario, Mudd does a 'Perry Mason' on Kennedy with far-reaching changes at CBS over the next 24 years.

March 9, 1981 -

The ageing Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite was approaching his 65th birthday, the mandatory retirement age at CBS. After 19 years in the seat, he had gained the authority of a religious leader or founding father. Now he would have to make way for one of his younger colleagues, either his fellow Texan Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, or Mike Wallace. At a precipitous moment for the fourth estate, it proved to be an impossible choice to replace the pillar of American broadcast journalism, and so CBS chose both Mudd and Rather.

On the eve of his retirement, Cronkite appeared on The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson. In his farewell statement, he announced, "This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job, and two others will follow. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981. I'll be away on assignment, and Roger Mudd will be sitting in here next week. Good night." The following night, Carson did a comic spoof of his on-air farewell address.

Mudd and Rather combining forces made sense as the credibility threats to instant news coverage were immense. It might well have been the end of an era, but perhaps even more significantly, the beginning of a new one under President Reagan. As the "most trusted man in America," Cronkite had reported events from 1937 onwards, a distant, more innocent time, when the mainstream media was much tamer. Even if he was a throwback to that era, he had been at the very front of a new generation of reporters who held the US government to account. Since Johnson and Nixon, a third transition was underway in which the US government fought back. There was a pause in this power struggle with the fourth estate during the troubled terms of their lackluster successors, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, both of whom experienced low approval rates. However, Cronkite's replacement(s) would have to report on the recently elected Ronald Reagan, a charismatic and articulate former actor who was arguably even more media-savvy than journalists. After two decades of crises in the US government, it was that the wave of popularity would usher in a new dawn for America.

Although Rather had been favored, Mudd was certainly a formidable reporter with a strong personal connection to history and American's lived experiences. He was a direct descendant of the doctor imprisoned for treating Lincoln's assassin. Mudd's first live TV studio interview was with Dorothy Counts, a black teenage girl who had suffered racial harassment at her otherwise all-white high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also anchored the coverage of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom for CBS. However, his trajectory really took off after one of the most famous moments in the history of television, the so-called "Roger Mudd Moment." This occurred when he stumped the Democrat candidate Ted Kennedy with the question, "Senator, why do you want to be President?" If this was a low point for the Kennedy family, it was followed by a remarkable moment of solidarity in journalists as Mudd and Rather unexpectedly agreed to co-host the show.

To satiate Rather's ego, he would be prime, promoted to the top-tier position of managing editor. Signing off on his first broadcast, Mudd explained that Rather would be on air the following week, quoting from the Book of Proverbs 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." This arrangement, while testy in its toughest moments, added an extra weight of credibility and was proven to pass the test of time. Audiences and producers alike were impressed as Mudd insisted Rather stay on air to present the news seven minutes late after a delayed tennis match featuring Stephie Graff.

Mudd's record of hard-hitting interviews contributed in the power struggle with the Bush dynasty, from the 1988 Iran-Contra interview with the then-vice president to the later Abu Ghraib scandal and ultimately Dubya's disputed service record during the Vietnam War. The Bush family would join the Kennedy family in castigating CBS, with Dubya blaming Mudd in particular for stopping his re-election in 2004. Following Mudd's passing in 2021, Rather's summary was customarily monosyllabic. "Courage," was all he said.

Author Note:

In reality, CBS awarded the job to Rather and Mudd chose to leave CBS News and he accepted an offer to join NBC News.

Provine's Addendum:

Commentators at the time and historians alike long debated the outcome of the close 2004 election, whether it was a widespread temperament or a handful of Ohioan voters that sealed the election for Kerry. Either way, many agreed with George W. Bush that the turning point in the campaign stemmed from another "Roger Mudd Moment." The Electoral College was heavily criticized as Kerry did not win the popular election by millions, leading to the 28th Amendment assuring an overall popular election for the presidency.

While largely uneventful through the years of working to disentangle the United States from the Middle East, the Kerry administration proved incredibly unpopular as the national economy fell into steep decline in 2008. Although many Democrats argued that Kerry's recovery plans would have worked given more time, there was no time before the election in November that swept John McCain into office. McCain would return in 2012, narrowly defeating Hillary Clinton. The Democrats returned to the White House in 2016 with the election of Barack Obama, whose longtime service in the Senate had established connections that led to major reforms in healthcare, immigration, and bank regulation. Obama's handling of the 2020 COVID pandemic became widely praised, part of a list of credentials that would win him the Nobel Peace Prize.