Dan Rather's biggest failing was/is a personality quirk. It's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. In some ways it's the same problem Al Gore has... a sense that he's trying to hard to fit a particular part, or mood or use the appropriate tones and gestures when expressing themselves. It's an affectation problem more than a substance problem. I recall being on the CBS Evening News set one afternoon back in the days when they were trying to jazz Rather's rating up. Everyone was rushing around very nervous. I asked one of the producers what was up. He blurted the answer: "Tonight Dan stands." That was the one and only night they let "Dan stand." The set up was that he would be sitting at the anchor desk as usual until a map of Afghanistan came up on a screen off to his left. At that time he would stand, walk a few steps over to the map and point at it. But the poor guy couldn't even pull that off. He stood and walked over to map stiff-legged, like, Frankenstein's creation holding a pointer stick. When he got to the map his arm jerked up into position, pointed, and jerked back down. He said something and returned, stiff-legged, to his chair. When he risked his life to cover the Afghan's resistance to the Soviets, he dressed in local garb earning the nick name, "Gunga Dan" among his peers. Dan's a good journalist handicapped by a personality deficit.