Cronkite 'Spoke for the Nation'

The tributes are pouring in for Walter Cronkite:

• Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: His "passing, in the end, is the passing of an era, an era of black-and-white television, of mass audiences, of a slower time when the country waited for the headlines at 6:30 in the evening. No anchor—no journalist—will ever wield that authority again."
• Jim Poniewozik, Time: He "was so thoroughly and uniquely linked with the word 'trust' that it is tempting to say that the word should be buried with him."

• Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times: "His eloquent mediation of the great events of an age ... was essential to the way those events were understood. Even when he was temporarily at a loss for words—his tears at the death of John F. Kennedy, his inarticulate glee at the moon landing ('Whew, boy!')—he somehow spoke for the nation he spoke to."
• Allessandra Stanley, New York Times: "No account of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency leaves out the night in February 1968 when Mr. Cronkite concluded, on the air, that the Vietnam War could not be won." (LBJ's take: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.")