“It was not Harry’s fault. You can’t blame anybody else. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend.”
Frankly, I’m stunned. I’ve been working off-and-on all afternoon on a ranty post in which I excoriate Darth Cheney for his stubborn silence on this shooting incident and the Bush White House in general for being so pathologically dead-set on never, ever admitting any kind of mistake whatsoever, and now the guy’s gone and accepted responsibility for something. All the wind has officially left my sails…
“The spirit that I have seen/May be the devil: and the devil hath power/To assume a pleasing shape”
— Hamlet II.ii
Frankly I’m surprised that this even is a story. My response? So what? He had an accident and it’s become what it doesn’t need to become; liberal political foder. Why is it so bad that he remains quiet? The guy almost killed someone. Let him live in his mistake and not run him through the mill. I’m so sick of hearing about this story as though it’s a White House coverup.
I don’t think it would’ve been much of a story, Mike, if not for the general tendency of this White House and of Cheney in particular to cloak everything they do in secrecy and to respond with utter contempt if anyone dares question them on anything (which is, of course, the mission of a free press in a democratic republic). This whole incident has come across as just one more example of a long-standing behavioral pattern.
While I don’t think Cheney needed to go on Oprah and make a big tearful confession within an hour of the accident — I have no doubt the man was traumatized and needed some time — his office still should’ve issued a brief statement the day it happened saying that it had occurred and that more detail would be released at a later time. If for no other reason than to avoid the kerfuffle that the official silence created. Keeping it quiet for eighteen hours and then letting someone else break the news made it appear that Cheney didn’t want to reveal what had happened.
People are talking about this like it’s a cover-up because, well, Cheney and his people have treated it like there was something to cover up. And the fact is, the man doesn’t have a very good public persona. Saying nothing for so long was a bad move politically, serving nothing except to contribute to Cheney’s public image as an uncaring hard-ass, and to the administration’s public image of wanting to hide every mistake they make.
As for “liberal political fodder,” don’t think for a moment that Republicans wouldn’t have made all kinds of political hay if Clinton or Gore had been involved in a similar accident, because I know you’re smarter than that. The sad fact is, everything is exploitable when you’re in the position these men are in. That’s the nature of politics…
The Republicans impeached Clinton for lying about getting a blowjob (can I say blowjob on this network??). It’s hard to call anything an overreaction after that, even if you don’t believe (as I do) that the ethical violations suspected of the current administration are orders of magnitude worse than anything Clinton was ever accused of. That said, can’t we all just get along??