In honor of Dan Rather's 20th anniversary as CBS anchor, here are a few of Dan Rather's more "brilliant" analyses, courtesy of the Media Research Center (www.mrc.org). Another website -- devoted exclusively to Dan Rather – is RatherBiased.com ( http://ratherbiased.com/").
Republicans want to hurt our children:
"The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children or the poor."
(CBS Evening News, March 16, 1995)
The Clintons are terrific!:
"If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners... Tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for her."
(To President Clinton, via satellite, at a CBS affiliates meeting, referencing new co-anchor Connie Chung to the Evening News, May 27, 1993)
Competitors to CBS News are morally inferior:
"It is not just Congress that is taking a sharp turn to the right. The surge to the right on Capitol Hill is making waves all over the country on openly politically partisan, and sometimes racist, radio."
(CBS Evening News, January 4, 1995)
Hillary Clinton should run for president someday:
"I would not be astonished to see Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee in 2000... Hillary Clinton is the Person of the Year in that, you talk about a comeback kid -- she makes her husband look like Ned in kneepants in terms of comeback from where she was early in the Clinton administration. You know, you add it all up, and you can make the case that Hillary Clinton might, might -- mark the word -- be the strongest candidate for the Democrats."
(Interview with CNN's Larry King, December 3, 1998)
Castro really cares about the Cuban people:
"While Fidel Castro, and certainly justified on his record, is widely criticized for a lot of things, there is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba and, I recognize this might be controversial, but there's little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, 'Listen, we really want this child back here.'"
(CBS News live coverage of the Elian raid, April 22, 2000)