Roger Mudd, whose TV network career spanned more than 30 years, once famously stumped Sen. Edward Kennedy by simply asking why he wanted to be president.
In an April 2008 interview on the “NewsHour,” he said he “absolutely loved” keeping tabs on the nation’s 100 senators and 435 representatives, “all of them wanting to talk, great access, politics morning, noon and night, as opposed to the White House, where everything is zipped up and tightly held.”
Mudd received a George Foster Peabody Award for his November 1979 special “CBS Reports: Teddy,” which aired just days before Kennedy officially announced his attempt to challenge then-President Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.
In the report, Mudd asked the Massachusetts senator a simple question: “Why do you want to be president?”
Kennedy was unable to give a focused answer or specify what he personally wanted to do.
Roger Mudd, whose TV network career spanned more than 30 years, once famously stumped Sen. Edward Kennedy by simply asking why he wanted to be president.
Roger Mudd, whose TV network career spanned more than 30 years, once famously stumped Sen. Edward Kennedy by simply asking why he wanted to be president.
Dave Bryan
FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2001, file photo, veteran journalist Roger Mudd tapes a segment for the History Channel at CBS studios in New York. Mudd, the longtime political correspondent and anchor for NBC and CBS who once stumped Sen. Edward Kennedy by simply asking why he wanted to be president, died Tuesday, March 9, 2021. He was 93. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File) March 09, 2021 - 7:13 PM
Roger Mudd, the longtime political correspondent and anchor for NBC and CBS who once stumped Sen. Edward Kennedy by simply asking why he wanted to be president, has died. He was 93.
CBS News says Mudd died Tuesday of complications of kidney failure at his home in McLean, Virginia.