NOT a good omen for the administration. Actually, Schieffer’s comments echo the comments of yours truly on TMV.
I’ve long admired Schieffer. I think CBS made a hideous mistake years ago when they got bogged down in deciding between Dan Rather and Roger Mudd and went with Rather (Mudd fled to PBS) and virtually exiled Walter Cronkite. Schieffer is in the Cronkite/Murrow mold.
People pooh-poohed the impact he’d have when Rather’s retirement was sped up and Schieffer replaced him as a caretaker. He was called too old by many — but the newscast’s ratings went up. And once he left and was replaced by Katie Couric, the ratings went down.
His comments are not quite the same as Cronkite turning against the Vietnam War — but it underscores the fact that many independent thinking Americans who don’t automatically defend or blast the administration notice how the administration has changed the announced form of the Petraeus report. His comments underscore the administration’s credibility which inspires the same confidence as a sub prime mortgage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYWUYg7qitkJoe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.