Posted on 02/21/2006 4:54:53 AM PST by Quilla
So far as we now know, Vice President Cheney did nothing wrong. Leading a bird with a 28-gauge shotgun, in late afternoon, he mistakenly shot in the face, neck and torso a hunting companion he thought he left a hundred yards behind.
Cheney's doctor and Secret Service detail gave first aid, had the veep's ambulance brought up and put the bleeding 78-year-old man in, and all went back to the Armstrong ranch for what had to be a horrible evening of anxiety about how gravely Harry Whittington had been wounded.
By 8 p.m., White House Chief of Staff Andy Card knew of the accident and Karl Rove had called Katharine Armstrong and been informed the vice president was the shooter.
The sheriff came around early the next morning and met with Cheney. As Cheney had no traveling press aide, it was agreed that Armstrong would inform the local paper. By afternoon Sunday, the story was on the wires.
But Monday, it had become something else altogether, as the White House press corps took on the aspect of that Muslim mob outside the Danish consulate in Beirut. Press secretary Scott McClellan, mild-mannered presenter of the daily press line, got the full Abu Ghraib treatment.
What caused the riot in the briefing room? The White House press corps, self-anointed custodians and conveyers of all news from the White House, had been left in the dark about what had happened in that field, while some little paper in Texas had broken the story, 12 hours after the accident. They had been left out of the loop.
To the White House press corps, it was all about them, about why they were not told, and thus there must be a Nixonian cover-up going on. But as the berating and badgering of McClellan went on and on, broadcast on cable, with clips rebroadcast all week, the White House press corps suffered serious damage. Right-wing talk radio replayed the clips and ripped them to pieces.
Rather than being seen as the informed and cool customers they play on talk shows, the White House press corps came off as nasty prep-school bullies. Said Dana Milbank of The Washington Post: "The press always looks awful. They (the White House) will once again make us look awful."
But the truth is the press revealed itself. The White House had nothing to do with it, unless one believes Cheney went dark for four days knowing a frustrated White House press would go berserk.
Yet, off-putting as their conduct was, the press succeeded. They directed the nation's attention to the shooting. They drove the story into headlines. They captured the agenda from George Bush. They raised suspicions about the incident that linger. They forced the vice president to accept responsibility in an interview with Fox News. And they appear to have driven a wedge between the White House and Cheney, if not between the president and Cheney. By midweek, White House aides were leaking word President Bush felt his vice president mishandled the incident.
The press corps damaged itself, but it also damaged the White House, too, which should take note. The adversary press of the Nixon era is back, and it is out for blood.
As some of us have long argued, the Washington press corps -- deeply ideologized as it is -- is both a cargo vessel of news and information and a carrier of contraband. Though it flies a neutral flag, there is nothing neutral about it. The D.C. press corps is to liberalism what the Inquisition was to Catholicism: the defender of orthodoxy and scourge of heretics.
In the endless war in Washington, the national press corps is the most formidable ally of the Democratic Party. If it sides with a GOP president, as the press corps did from 9-11 to March 2003, the president is almost invincible.
But when the press returns to its ideological camp, and turns the full force of its hostility on the White House, as it did on Nixon in Watergate and Reagan in Iran-Contra, it is the Democrats' last, best hope of bringing down a president.
Cheney's mistake in this episode was that he acted as a normal human being, not a vice president being stalked. He gave his enemies an opening, and they stormed through it. The lesson of last week is that the Bush White House had better get its act together, because the adversary press has its act together.
They aim to take this president down, and last week they got the scent of blood in their nostrils. It was written all over them in that pressroom.
They liked it, and they will be back.
Well, Patsy gets it right this time...but I'm a bit confused: I always thought he was FOR the Inquisition, but he seems ambiguous about it here.
Sounds like he's still FOR it.
The President is playing this perfectly. By ignoring the press, he has caused a 14 day meltdown, gregory falling apart and forced to apologize, and all the talking heads stating that the press jumped the shark.
Yep, poor old Bush, no one told HIM he was a lame duck! Bwahahahahahaha!!!!!
LLS
I'd prefer to call it "conservative" radio. Although this nut pretty much got it right this time, he is still a loose cannon with very little credibility.
Diagree. This press core stumping Plame, SCOTUS nominees, NASA, Iraq, and an accidental shooting is not playing with the public.
Everything Bill Plante and Dave Gregory says is now suspect.
When your credibility is diminished, so is your power.
This is true.
****
The old established/liberal/socialist media is America's most ruthless, relentless, and destructive enemy.
He makes a good point here, but I think that more and more people every year see the white house press corp for what they are and pay them no mind, which necessarily limits their influence more and more year by year. I thing pretty soon the white house will be able to deny half of the old guard access and instead invite in that many more reporters with brains.
Alan Simpson: "All you get is controversy, crap, and confusion from the media."
The adversarial press is light years more adversarial to GOP Presidents than to any Dem. It's mildly interesting watching lions of the press corp claim neutrality and point to instances where they gave pinprick heck to Dems. They actually believe it. When a similar circumstance comes up in future, I expect these individuals will think hard (for a microsecond) but then go with their instincts. That's the thing: they are emotionally driven. They will suddenly rediscover the need for the press to express national sympathy, not wage bloodsport.
The reason this titanic hypocrisy can exist in folks who understand intellectual honesty is simply the incredible elasticity built into the enterprise of discursive logic.
you are naive on this or guilty of wishful thinking. Infomred people most probably respond the way you describe, but most voters are not informed. It is an attriton thing. Read Dan Henninger in last Friday's WSJ. go to opinonjournal.com and search for it there.
The whole deal was almost worth it to see that twit Gregory whine on Meet the Press Sunday. I wrote a nice, respectful and short letter to NBC News last week advising them that he was in dire need of reassignment, and fantasized that Gregory's mea culpas were in reponse to my email...
Bush taking advice from Pat Buchanan would be like Snow White accepting the poisoned apple.
He is right that the mainstream press is an adversary, and I think this is precisely why it was handled as it was - the MSM went into hysterical orbit, but the battle was on Cheney's terms, not theirs, and they ended up looking like fools by hyping a non-story.
Furthermore, it made them look as inept as they are: if they had really been paying attention, they surely would have noticed ambulances and cars leaving the ranch, and possibly even the police arriving (since it was reported to teh police right after it happened). But instead they were sitting around their hotel rooms waiting for the subject of their reports to come groveling to them with information. Is that what their publications pay them for? I doubt it.
Frankly, I think this was handled just fine and it exploded right in the face of the MSM and squirted ink in their eye.
OK, but how do you explain the White House "aides" sniping at Cheney? That can't be part of the plan, can it?
Dave Gregory just needs a good old fashioned a$$-whoopin'. The kind that he got repeatedly in high school.
Maybe not a fantasy.
Dan Henninger in last Friday's WSJ. go to opinonjournal.com and search for it there
Thanks, read it.
This week long unjustified tantrum by these guys will diminish their stature and their credibility with a majority.
This type of prose is what makes Pat a great writer.
Baseball bats!
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