Wrong. This will have absolutely zero political effect. Rather, it is a case study in how the White House Press Corps and much of the legacy media is out of control, focusing on the trivial and the meaningless instead of doing a professional job.
Does anybody seriously believe that, had the Vice President called a televised press conference within a half hour after the incident, we would see "respected New York Times columnist Bob Herbert" congratulating Cheney on his Vice Presidential abilities and quick and forthright response on such a matter of critical importance? Nonsense. Would the joke writers at the Letterman and Leno shows have held their fire? Nonsense. Would Chuck Schumer have praised Cheney instead of savaging him? Not a chance. Would the moonbats on the left have moderated their craziness? No way. The media are playing with a stacked deck. If Sabato had any credibility beforehand, he has squandered quite a bit of it with his laughable "analysis" of this incident...
Not only that, but the media is "crying their collective eyes out" over how "secretive" this administration is... I can't imagine why! Before President Bush was even elected, he was savaged by the press as being a nit-wit, formrely drunken "party boy." And do you remember the word, "gravitas?" That was the word that the MSM used to describe the VP candidate that President Bush's handlers (remember, he was that nit-wit, light-weight) would need to select, to really run the country. What they got was a serious man with lots of executive experience in the "real world," something that simply scares the liberal press. And the fact that he got rich running on of the biggest companies in the world immediately made VP Cheney their enemy, since good people don't get rich by running big companies, unless they're leftists who spout the leftist lines.
So, the MSM savaged both President Bush and Vice President Cheney relentlessly, saying terrible things, repeating lies, and making the overseas press believe all those things. So, the rest of the world bought what the American MSM was saying, hook, line, and sinker, and then pointed at the overseas press as proof that the Administration was inept and The President a flake.
Personally, this whole incident has given me an even lower impression of the press, something that I really didn't think was possible.
Mark