You know, I’m going to miss Dan Rather, and not just because I’ve devoted the last few months to demanding that he go away.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been watching the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” and have discovered, to my surprise, how much I still enjoy getting my news in a half-hour chunk in the early evening. I’m sure it has a lot to do with growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, when most people watched “CBS Evening News” every weeknight. The CBS 6:30 newscast was to television what the New York Times was to print, only with far wider reach. The show came packaged with a mellifluous master of ceremonies (Walter Cronkite) and flashy correspondents (Roger Mudd, Harry Reasoner, Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, Morley Safer) delivering dispatches from around the world. In those days it even had an op-ed page, in the person of Eric Sevareid. I never quite knew what he was talking about, but I felt smart just listening.

I started watching the Rather broadcast again this past February, fully expecting to be bored to tears. I’d seen promos for segments like “Eye on America” and assumed they’d be as turgid as advertised. None of the CBS correspondents had impressed me particularly, but the fact is I had never watched them consistently enough to risk forming any attachments. But it was almost time for Mr. Rather to go, and somehow I wanted to reconnect with his Ratherness (or is it Ratherosity?) in those final weeks of his 24-year tenure behind the anchor desk. You have to admit, it’s an awesome piece of real estate. In the winter of 1978, I was working the overnight shift as a tape transcriber at CBS News radio, and every so often would steal a brief moment in Mr. Cronkite’s chair, just down the hall. (I even recall the place where Mr. Cronkite kept his moustache comb.) It felt like sitting on a throne.

Nowadays it seems Dan Rather doesn’t even sit down. He has been the most peripatetic anchorman of our time, continuing to travel everywhere and bring his newscast with him, even at the age of 73. (A CBS News producer explained to me that Mr. Rather likes to refer to his portable newscast as his MACU, or Mobile Anchor Command Unit.) No one would ever accuse Mr. Rather of trying to evade hard work or responsibility, which was the issue at the core of the National Guard story that got him into so much trouble last September. Mr. Rather has always loved to roam; some who worked with him at “60 Minutes” in the 1970s recall that he would sometimes disappear for days at a time and finally turn up in some obscure foreign destination, story in hand. He has been to Iraq at least eight times since the war started, and will no doubt continue to seek out war zones when he joins “60 Minutes Wednesday” full time this spring. He suffers, like so many in this profession, from a full-tilt case of wanderlust.

The show he leaves behind tomorrow night turns out to be in surprisingly decent shape. Stories still cover the major headlines and issues – the show leads with the day’s big story, such as the Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty for minors – but the balance ranges all over the landscape of ideas. Stories about teens and tanning alternate with explainers of the Bush administration plan for personal retirement accounts. I listened closely to Mr. Rather’s “tell” of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s idea for a consumption tax last Thursday and found it informative and clear. After all these years, I still love the nightly graphic that addresses the ups and downs of the stock market; it’s gotten a little sleeker, as it should. Mr. Rather seems surprisingly at ease on the spaceage set that now houses the broadcast, full of screens and machines.

All of a sudden I’ve grown nostalgic for Dan Rather’s take on the world. I wonder if future occupants of the throne will match his passion. In recent days, the “CBS Evening News” has trotted out the hoariest of notions, the “Reporter’s Notebook,” as a conceit for commemorating the Rather era – and, amazingly enough, it has worked. It reminded viewers of just how much of history Mr. Rather had witnessed firsthand: Vietnam, Watergate, and civil rights were only three of the big stories Rather covered. With well-done interviews framing the stories (I especially liked the Charles Colson interview in the Watergate segment), each one added yet another dimension to our collective memory of Mr. Rather, the first real rock star of television news.

It’s a shame, really, that Mr. Rather allowed himself to push so hard for a story that couldn’t hold up. The National Guard documents fiasco may well have obscured forever the phenomenal achievements of his career. No matter how he may resent it, there’s no escaping the permanence of the stain. I admired David Letterman’s tough handling of Mr. Rather last Thursday night; in asking the direct, tough questions on everyone’s mind, Mr. Letterman honored Mr. Rather by not treating him as though he’s too fragile to handle the topic head-on. Journalists tend to be among the most thin-skinned of interview subjects, but Mr. Rather seems more capable than most of handling the media hordes. Mr. Rather is his own most ardent advocate, his staunchest supporter. In retrospect, it’s clear he would never have resigned his job; he believes too passionately in his own importance to his country. Looking back on his epic career as a journalist, it’s hard not to agree.

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Steven Bochco’s new ABC series “Blind Justice,” which debuts tonight in the “NYPD Blue” timeslot, is the story of a once-great television writer who has lost his vision.