There is another way to look at the Rathergate story, however. While the left sees it as simply rushing a story onto the air before all the nasty details were spruced up and the right sees it as liberal bias, it can be seen, quite convincingly, as personal animosity on Rather’s part against the Bush family, going back to Dan’s attempt to ambush Poppie Bush on Iran/Contra only to have his ass handed to him on a platter concerning his walking off the set in a snit when a football game threatened to run over into this time slot. While we can never tease these explanations apart completely, personal animus has to be at least part of the story.
That, and Dan’s just a weird bird with enough power to play out his personal problems on the air at the most critical juncture in a presidential campaign.