The following is Matthews entire final commentary:
Chris Matthews: "So Katie Couric is gonna anchor the CBS News. You could say it’s been done before. Tom Brokaw did Today and then dominated on NBC’s Nightly News. But of course it hasn’t been done before. Katie, after all is a Katie. Will the older audiences who fill the seats for the evening news programs go for Katie Couric? Will they give her a chance to change history? It’s a dead-on question. Think of the role we give the network news anchor in our culture. When a President was shot I ran to the TV set and saw this."
[Walter Cronkite: "From Dallas, Texas the flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1pm central standard time, 2 o’clock eastern standard time, some 38 minutes ago."]
Matthews: "Yes an anchor is not simply a newsreader or even someone who decides the news items to be featured and in what order. The anchor is also the country’s anchor especially when it counts. When we need some stability in the ship of state. You may have figured where I’m heading with this. Will the verdict on Katie constitute an early verdict on a Hillary sitting in the President’s chair? That’s right, before we get to vote on Hillary for President we’re gonna get to vote for Katie for Anchorwoman. We’re gonna be showing our hand about how we feel about a woman with such power. How we are going to feel about the same question in 2008. This time it will be in our living rooms using a remote flicker, the next time it will be in a voting booth. This time it won’t be as much about the night to night performance of Katie Couric. It will be more about the emerging roles of men and women in our society and how we feel about her in that chair. As the great Edward R. Murrow once said, ‘Our future lies not in our stars but in ourselves.’ That’s the show, thanks for watching. See ya next week."
