Dan Rather: Optimistic About America

One of the most famous journalists in American history, Dan Rather spent 44 years at CBS, leaving behind a storied and sometimes controversial legacy. Now he's written a book, What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, coauthored with Elliot Kirschner, that includes personal stories about what he considers important American values. We spoke with the Texas-born news anchor about his book, his soaring social media popularity and the quality he would like to see more of among Americans. Here's what Rather told us.

Why he wrote this book:

Well, I wrote this book for a lot of reasons, beginning with the fact that I’ll celebrate my 86th birthday soon and I realized how lucky and blessed I’ve been to live this long, to see how things have changed. Now here we are in the second decade of the 21st century and so often when I hear it or read about patriotism — it set me to thinking, what do I think patriotism is? I started writing.

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The quality he would like more Americans have right now:

Empathy. I've written about it in What Unites Us. Empathy and knowing the difference between sympathy and compassion and empathy. I wrote about how when I was a child, one Christmastime my family had arranged to get a few things for some people in the neighborhood who were less fortunate than we were. I said to my mother, “Why do we help these people?” My mother said, “What do you think?” I said, “Because we feel sorry for them.” She said, “No, it’s not that we feel sorry for them, it’s that we understand what it’s like for them.” She went on to say a version of “There by the grace of God go we." It made a lasting impression on me.

On adjusting to life after CBS:

When I left CBS News in 2006, I had no idea what I was going to do. I still had my health, I still had the driving dream of trying to make myself a world-class journalist, but I had no job and I had no prospects. I wasn’t looking for any sympathy, but my identity was so much "Dan Rather, CBS News correspondent" that it was almost my name.  

I went through a very short period in which I just said to myself, "I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself," because I had no prospects. Fortunately, Mark Cuban contacted me about going to work for his satellite and cable channel, now known as AXS TV, doing a weekly news program, and I spent about six and a half years doing that and other news programs for him.