HOW HE SEES IT Rather has himself to blame for his fall

By MICHAEL GOODWIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
It's the last stand of Gunga Dan. But like other messianic types -- George Custer comes to mind -- Dan Rather is not going down alone. He seems hellbent on taking CBS News with him and damaging the press everywhere.
Memogate is now Rathergate. Journalists not yet born will one day hear the story of how the highest flier in TV news flamed out while chasing a "gotcha" story.
Rather, 72, always saw himself as a role model for journalists. But instead of being revered elder statesman, he's sealing his fate as Exhibit A on how not to handle a hot story and the fallout. How sad. Suicide always is, even the professional kind.
The man who succeeded Uncle Walter Cronkite in 1981 is wound tighter than a tick in a yo-yo, but Rather's oddball quirks have peacefully coexisted with his talent.
Contrast
He's got train-wreck charisma, zanily captured by the stranger who pummeled him, demanding, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" But there was principle, too, and Rather often used it to stand up for news values in a business dominated by cheap entertainment tricks.
That's what makes his performance on the Bush National Guard story such a personal disaster. But that's his problem. Ours is making sure we learn the dangers of burning too hot for a story in an election where the media's credibility is taking a beating.
CBS' document mess is the biggest whopper of them all, for Rather was the Pied Piper for a long list of press followers. More than 50 newspapers across the United States, including The New York Times and the New York Daily News, published articles citing the now-questionable CBS documents as proof Bush got favored treatment 30 years ago.
That total counts just Sept. 9, the day after Rather's initial report on "60 Minutes." CBS touted the show in a press release Sept. 8 and posted the memos on its Web site.
Three key blunders
The "scoop" was huge, and so is the stain, which is why Rather had an obligation to stop defending the indefensible. Here are the three blunders he and CBS made:
UThey never should have gone with the story in the first place. Since it aired, three of the "experts" the network said authenticated the documents have cast doubts on them. Two said they warned CBS it needed more proof.
UWhen questions surfaced, CBS first trotted out the tired "we stand by our story" defense while desperately searching for people who would back it up. Rather and network flacks are still making the astonishing claim that the "heart" of the story is true even if the documents are fake. Yeah, the operation was a success, but the patient died.
UThe third blunder is Rather's alone, and it is the most shameful. In interviews, he has sounded like a crooked pol caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He told The Wall Street Journal that critics are "raising questions about the documents because they can't deny the fundamental truths of the analysis."
To The Washington Post, he played macho man: "I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces."
Such comments are unforgivable smears. As Bernard Goldberg, a former CBS correspondent and now critic, put it, "Dan Rather is acting like Richard Nixon."
As legacies go, that's not one Rather wanted. But he earned it.
XMichael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.