Roger Mudd, the longtime CBS News correspondent and anchor who later teamed briefly with Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News, has died. He was 93. Mudd died Tuesday of kidney failure at his home in McLean, VA, according to CBS News. With a to-the-point style, Mudd was a familiar face for decades on network television, starting on CBS in the early 1960s, as he reported on Congress, politics and government. He became a star correspondent and filled in for Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair in the late 1960s and early 1970s and on the weekend CBS Evening News broadcasts. But no moment stood out more in Mudd’s career than an interview he did in 1979 with Sen. Edward Kennedy, readying a challenge to President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. Mudd’s question was short and a bit of a softball — “Why do you want to be president? ” — but Kennedy’s answer was all over the map. Kennedy went on to lose the nomination to Carter. After a pause, Kennedy said, “Well I’m…were I to make the announcement to run, the reasons to run was because I have a great belief in this country that there’s more natural resources than any nation of the world…”Mudd won a Peabody Award for his work on the special, CBS Reports: Teddy. He later recalled that Kennedy’s answer was “almost a parody of a politician’s answer. ”In his memoir, Kennedy wrote that he had yet to announce his presidential run, and “had no intention of announcing my candidacy in this interview with Roger Mudd. ”He added, “My displeasure with Roger Mudd unfortunately spilled over into my interview performance. I regret that. If I had already declared my candidacy, I suppose I would have a more polished answer to Mudd’s question, but the essence would have been the same. ”Mudd was in contention to succeed Cronkite when he retired in 1981, but Dan Rather won the spot, signaling a new era of highly paid “star” anchors on the network newscasts. Mudd then left the network for NBC News, where he was teamed with Tom Brokaw to co-anchor NBC Nightly News, in what seemed like an effort to replicate the chemistry of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. But the pairing didn’t work, and Brokaw the next year became sole anchor. Mudd later served as a moderator of Meet the Press and as host of two NBC attempts to launch a newsmagazine. In a statement, Brokaw said that Mudd “was one of the most gifted journalists of my lifetime. An astute political reporter and guardian of the highest standards. Roger’s dedication to fundamental journalistic practices remains a marker for future generations. ”Later in his career, Mudd became a correspondent and occasional anchor for MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, and was an anchor on The History Channel. He also taught at Princeton and Washington and Lee universities. Mudd was born on Feb. 9, 1928, in Washington, D. C., and got his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University in 1950, and his masters in American history from the University of North Carolina in 1951.