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.
It wasn't so much that the press corps sided with Bush after 9-11, as they decided it was a good time to lie low. Nonetheless, the refusal of some to wear flag pins or assign right and wrong (to this day, many MSM stalwarts insist in calling terrorists "freedom fighters" or "insurgents") shows where they stand.
I agree with you. This damaged the press more than it did anything to the administration as evidenced by the numbers cited by Time which actually show that the Vice President is an asset to the administration and that his numbers are close to the President's. Not to mention that most of those who were interviewed found that this had no bearing on their view of the Vice President.
This article is more about Pat Buchanan enjoying the distress of David Gregory but not admitting that he's also out of sorts as the WH rightly ignores him.
If you're apologizing, you're not winning.
Gregory apologized.
Fu_k the White House Press Corps... fu_k the MSM... they will ALWAYS work to destroy a Republican administration.
Cheney made them play HIS game... and they came off as the DNC-compromized, nanny-state socialists they really are. Give'm it to'em again and again til their 'friggin heads spin off!
Why does Pat think that the MSM, with its failing readership and falling stock prices, is still the nation's gatekeeper for all the nation's news?
And why does he think that the MSM is "the most formidable ally" of a political party that has resigned itself to minority status?
Pat is still thinking of the glory days when newsprint was bought by the mega-barrel and computers didn't exist.
Been outta town for a few days - any links to the Gregory apology?
THAT I want to savor/enjoy/gloat over.
Thanks.
Here's a better description of the events and the timing.
I think Buchanan gives the White House Press Corps & MSM too much credit. I think the American people saw right through this story from the beginning. The MSM is becoming a caricature of itself, they're the boy who cried "wolf". Everything, and I mean everything, is a scandal. The more they scream, the more ridiculous and insignificant they become.
Excellent information...thanks, TJ.
So, I suppose when the press made up a fake document to nail the Prez with before his election they weren't in rabid Nixonian mode? How about Abu Grabib? Katrina? Numerous other examples?
I'd love to know how the press damaged the admin. It's conventional beltway wisdom, which means it's wrong. The only possible way what the pressers could be said to hurt the admin even short term, was if you call not having his health care accounts on front page last week. Okay, I'll give that, but in return we didn't have more national secrets leaked. I'll take that return.
The man that wants Bush impeached warning the admin to watch it's back because the press wants him impeached. How hilarious. The ONLY reason Pat is come out somewhat in favor of the admin, is because Nixon's name was invoked and Pat reflexively remembers the old days when he actually targeted the real enemies. he will always defend Nixon, to which is a credit most of the time since most of the time the slaps at Nixon aren't entirely deserved, but this piece is a result of his sensibilities being offended that the pressers went after his Prez (Nixon) again.
Thanks, Sam.
pat is pretty much still in tune with most conservatives as long as the topic does not involve israel and/or the middle east.
the american people voted for gore, at least half of them. very close to half voted for kerry.
you give the american people as a group credit for too much intelligence and, for that matter, detailed interest in the topic.
Hey Pat always gets it right. That's why opponents can't refute his truth. They just smear his name.
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