Posted on 02/15/2006 8:14:37 AM PST by presidio9
No room for a laughingstock
It is humor that often drives the final nail in the political coffin. The images of Gerald Ford falling on his face and hitting spectators with golf balls outlived his presidency. Jimmy Carter endured the Iranian hostage crisis and the misery index, but he had no comeback to the million yuks that followed his battle with an attacking rabbit. All of which is to say that Deadeye Dick Cheney is history. He is the Dead Veep Walking, whether he knows it or not. Ridicule is fatal.
It's not just late-night comedians declaring open season on Cheney after he accidently shot a hunting companion in Texas. Team Bush, playing catchup after it bungled the public release of the incident, decided yesterday that joining in on the fun was to its advantage. Presidential press secretary Scott McClellan joked that the burnt-orange color of the University of Texas football team visiting the White House had nothing to do with hunter safety gear.
"The orange that they're wearing is not because they're concerned that the vice president may be there," said McClellan, who was wearing a burnt-orange necktie. But "that's why I'm wearing it." Even the President's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, got in the spirit. In Tampa, he put an orange sticker on his chest, then cracked, "I'm a little concerned that Dick Cheney is going to walk in."
The White House abandoned the tack when victim Harry Whittington took a turn for the worse, but the cause was lost from the git-go. Partisan humor can't rescue Cheney. Not when a knowing, howling humor fueled by accepted truth has him in its death grip. America, and the world, are not laughing with Cheney. We're laughing at him. The already diminished value of Cheney's presence now shrinks to zero.
For Ford, the clumsy mishaps 30 years ago reinforced the notion he had played football too long without a helmet. The irony is that one of Ford's ardent defenders in those days was his chief of staff, Dick Cheney.
Carter, already considered a prissy, ineffective moralist, would have fared better had a wolf attacked him in 1979 instead of a rabbit. The surreal quality was magnified because the incident happened in a pond. Carter was in a canoe fishing when the rabbit swam toward him baring its teeth.
"I saw it was going to attempt to climb in the boat with me," Carter said, adding that he beat it off with a paddle. In the court of public opinion, the "banzai bunny" was champ.
That Cheney is now being ridiculed reflects how far he has fallen. When he signed on as Bush's running mate in 2000, he was regarded as the intelligent adult on the ticket. But asset turned to liability as Iraq proved messy and Cheney's band of neocons seemed better at infighting than managing world affairs. The fact that his old company, Halliburton, profits from the war only adds to his baggage.
I was not alone in 2004 in hoping Bush would replace him for the second term with someone like Rudy Giuliani who might give the administration fresh energy. Instead, Bush's loyalty was repaid with the indictment of Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, for lying in the CIA leak case.
My well-wired colleague Tom DeFrank has written of a distance that has developed between Bush and Cheney over both Iraq and the Libby case. That's not to suggest the shooting will lead Bush to ask Cheney to disappear. Then again, he doesn't need to. The howls of laughter are doing it for him.
Originally published on February 15, 2006
I wonder if somewhere Vince Foster and Mary Jo Kopechne are shaking their heads.
I predict that the nation will remember Dick Cheney far longer than it remembers Michael Goodwin.
Politicians really do lose power when people laugh at them.
The writer managed to mention both "Neocons" and "Halliburton" in the same paragraph. What a fool.
I predict history will look much more kindly on Cheney and Bush than the early 21st century press.
HOw long before the MSM or Howard Dean starts calling the Bush administration "the gang that couldn't shoot straight"?
That's the plan anyway at some point, I hope.
The most important thing to note when deciding whether or not the writer of this article has a valid point is that the name "Clinton" does not appear, even once. It is telling when a writer clearly ignores facts that clash with their basic premise. Clinton (I did not have sex with that woman) has been the butt of a thousand times more ridicule than Ford, Carter, and Cheney taken together, yet there's not a Clinton reference in sight, and he remains a driving force in his party and on the world stage. Garbage in, garbage out...
If Algore or Kerry had mistakenly shot someone during a hunting accident, we'd be howling too.
The MSM, however, would obviously havebeen downplaying it a zillion times less than they are now....
This too shall soon pass...
Yeah, but Cheney's old and has already said he has no intentions of running for further public office.
Furthermore, Cheney and Bush actually did something during their time in office. The stuff I was taught about Carter's administration when I was in school was stagflation, hostage scandal, impotent against the USSR. Ford was the president who was never elected and really didn't do much of anything to speak of while he was in office.
This is not an apples to apples comparison.
That's the plan anyway at some point, I hope.
Condolezza Rice is pro-choice and therefore unelectable in her own right. She has admitted as much herself. Making her a VP serves no purpose, as this is the end of the road for her.
If this guys hypothesis was correct, teddy Kennedy would have faded into obscurity decades ago...
Al Gore is in Saudi Arabia giving ridiculous speeches, but he is just fine by the media. Nothing clumsy, psychotic or stupid has been done by Mr Gore.
Stained blue dress and finger wagging.
Indeed, the two presidents that I can think of who were most ridiculed were Reagan (for being "senile"), and Clinton (for obvious reasons).
The author forgets one important element: both Carter and Ford were done in by their own blundering, not that of their respective Vice-Presidents. And the ridicule made a lasting impression because both men had to stand for re-election (or election, in Ford's case).
President Bush has already been re-elected. Thus this storm, despite its fury, will soon pass. Unless Whittington dies.
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