"It seems now more certain than ever," Walter Cronkite told his audience in a de facto editorial, "that the bloody experience of Vietnam is a stalemate" and that the war was "unwinnable." Cronkite's statement and call for U.S. withdrawal helped turn public opinion against the war. It also demoralized American troops and Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, who was said to have declared that losing Cronkite’s support meant he had lost the backing of Middle America.
When Republican President Richard Nixon refused to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam, the Democrats used the Watergate scandal to topple his presidency. Cronkite played a key role in the political process that ousted Nixon -- chiefly by broadcasting a news story every night on the CBS Evening News under the banner "Watergate." At the time, Cronkite insisted that he was non-partisan, objective and fair. Since his retirement, however, he has acknowledged his liberal political views.
"Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents," said Cronkite in 1996, speaking to his colleagues at the Radio and TV Correspondents Association dinner.
In an October 1999 awards speech at the United Nations, Cronkite said that "half a century ago" he had been offered "a job as spokesman and Washington lobbyist for the World Federalist organization" that advocates a one-world government. "I chose instead to continue in the world of journalism," Cronkite continued. "For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience. Now, however, my circumstances are different. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do."
“[W]e must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government,” added Cronkite. “… We must change the basic structure of our global community … to a new system governed by a democratic UN federation. … Today the notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy. We must replace the anarchic law of force with a civilized force of law." Cronkite specifically called for ratification of the "Treaty for a Permanent International Criminal Court" that would allow Americans to be convicted of actions deemed crimes by judges from nations such as Communist Cuba and Communist China. He also called for a "revision of the [U.S. power of] Veto in the Security Council" and cited international billionaire financier George Soros as one of the best thinkers on this topic.
In 2004 Cronkite criticized Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry for not confidently embracing the label "liberal," which Cronkite equated with being "progressive," "broad-minded," "unprejudiced," and "beneficent."
In a Cable News Network interview with Larry King just days before the 2004 presidential election, Cronkite stated, “I have a feeling that [Osama bin Laden's newly released videotape] could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”
In January 2006 Cronkite stated that he felt the war in Iraq was unwinnable. "It's my belief that we should get out now," he told a group of reporters. He said that the Bush administration should have cited, as a pretext for announcing a troop withdrawal, the costs entailed in responding to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which had struck New Orleans and the surrounding area in August 2005. Said Cronkite, "We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States. Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home." Cronkite maintains that Americans are not any safer as a result of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein.