Rather get out on the bottom

in the early afternoon on Tuesday, the 23rd of November 2004 by Chad

Credibility, that is…
Dan Rather is leaving CBS news as anchorman, and will remain a “correspondent.”
In other words, he can’t take the heat of being a partisan anymore while trying to hide it.
Maybe this has something to do with the timing:

A report on what went wrong with the National Guard story, from a two-man independent investigative panel, is due imminently. Rather anchored the story and initially defended it when it was criticized.