Posted on 02/21/2006 4:07:48 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez
"I thought the vice president handled the issue just fine." — George W. Bush, Feb. 16, 2006
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." — George W. Bush, Sept. 2, 2005
Some of us have always thought of Dick Cheney, vice president of the United States, former secretary of defense, industrial magnate and general mover-and-shaker, as The Brains of the Outfit.
We still do, but intelligence isn't everything in a leader. Or even the most important thing — like judgment or honesty or prudence or modesty or, well, name your own favorite character trait. Lest we forget, the smartest people can do the stupidest things. (Cf. The Hon. William Jefferson Clinton.)
It's become almost a Washington mantra since Watergate: What really gets a politician into trouble isn't the mistake, even a serious mistake, but how it's addressed afterward — promptly or tardily, candidly or evasively, well or badly enough to amount to a far more serious mistake, as in cover-up.
Dick Cheney now has stepped forward (finally) and taken responsibility, full responsibility, for firing first and looking afterward on that quail hunt, or maybe looking simultaneously, which can be just as dangerous. That's good.
But he's still sticking with his story about its being perfectly proper to wait till the next morning to let the country know that a vice president of the United States has shot a friend in a hunting accident. Even though presidential counselor Dan Bartlett and the president's press secretary, Scott McClellan, both advised him to get the story out — widely — as soon as he could. But the best advice is of no use if one doesn't take it, and the vice president didn't. .
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Pinging you to #119
I see what you're driving at. I just don't see how your proposed strategy of full immediate disclosure would have resulted in a better outcome. But it is an unprovable point, so I guess we will just have differing opinions.
I expect it to go up. When the press overplays their hand as they have done here, the public rallies around the person they attack.
Well, it wouldn't have created the story about the lack of an immediate disclosure, which is what the press has been pounding away at for two weeks now.
Al Gore was paid by the bin Laden family to give an anti-American speech the day before Cheney's hunting accident, and we allowed their media to ignore that story, and divert the nation's focus on Cheney's.
Our media should have been pounding on Gore.
Now, in light of the deal with the ports we can't even attack Gore for this.
That's OUR fault.
Here is the story that should have been the center of the news last week:
The Saudi Arabia seminar that was addressed by former Vice President Al Gore over the weekend in a speech that criticized the U.S. for being too tough on Arabs was sponsored, in part, by Osama bin Laden's family.On Saturday, the state-run Saudi news outlet Arab News reported that the Jeddah Economic Forum, where Gore spoke, was funded by "Saudi Arabian Airlines, the Saudi Binladin Group, Gulf One Investment Bank, Saudi Basic Industries Corp." and an array of other big companies with ties to the Middle East.
The Saudi BinLadin Group - which is Saudi Arabia's largest construction company - is run by Osama bin Laden's brothers and cousins. Jeddah, the site of the forum attended by Gore, is Osama bin Laden's hometown.
Why are we so inept at controlling the means of mass information dissemination?
And why do we constantly concede victory to their ability to control mass information dissemination?
In the post-shooting polls, nothing has changed. Then again, that's a safe prediction considering that there is very little way to go but up.
Do you seriously think that this story would have gone away if Cheney had come forward on Saturday night with half the story? It was going to dominate the next two weeks no matter what.
The press was going to do it's utmost to damage the Vice President over this shooting no matter what.
The press would have ignored Algore's disloyalty-for-dollars no matter what.
"The" press?
You concede control of the press to their side as if it is a foregone conclusion.
We can't use the fact that their press will help them and not us as an excuse why we don't have the similar ability to control press of our own.
Long term, you are right. We should develop and promote our own media outlets to combat the overwhelmingly leftist MSM. But that's always been true. I don't see what it has to do with the immediate problem of this week.
Frankly, having the MSM howling and looking like idiots only hastens their demise, which is a good thing.
Oh come on now...you're just goading us for fun now... aren't you? I see that smile coming thru your postings!
Who said it was not news? I did'nt, but the press was informed. Too bad it was'nt the leftist MSM who were scooped by the paper in Corpus Christi.
This has been an ongoing problem for how long now?
When exactly are we going to start doing something about it, and when are we going to stop GIVING them stories to beat us up with?
If politics were a shoot out, we are the ones showing up without a gun!
And we have yet to figure out that we need to get a gun; instead, we whine about the fact that they have a gun and we don't.
"Frankly, having the MSM howling and looking like idiots only hastens their demise, which is a good thing."
To those who already know that the MSM are idiots, what they do at this point makes very little difference. To those in this voters in this nation who DON'T know that the leftist media are idiots, and that they are in fact the propaganda dissemination arm of the left, the mainstream media is their primary source for news, and controls the way they formulate their opinion.
We cannot allow ourselves to concede that battle to the left any longer.
When I go out in the most liberal county in Florida, to work toward defeating Bill Nelson later this year, here is what I'll face:
Rank-and-file Republicans have made the adjustment as well. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of GOP voters now plan to vote for Harris in November. That's up from 59% in early January and matches Senator Bill Nelson's support among Democrats.Overall, however, Harris still trails Nelson by nine percentage points, 49% to 40% (see crosstabs). Among voters not affiliated with either the Republicans or Democrats, Harris trails badly, 64% to 18%.
Those are the people that I need to swing in order to procure a victory, and all they've heard for months now is "MIERS!!!!!", "WIRE TAPPING!!!!!", "CHENEY SHOOTS FRIEND AND DOESN'T TELL ANYONE!!!!!", "ARABS CONTROL OUR PORTS!!!!!".
President Bush is the leader of this Party, and while I admire the hell out of both he and Cheney, with all friggin' due respect, now it's time for the two of them to play hardball politics, and harball politics requires media control.
I don't subscribe to the gotcha theory of media control.
"The responsibility for handling this, of course, was Cheney's," Fitzwater, who served as presidential press secretary for George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, told E&P in a phone interview from his Maryland home. "What he should have done was call his press secretary and tell her what happened and she then would have gotten a hold of the doctor and asked him what happened. Then interview [ranch owner] Katharine Armstrong to get her side of events and then put out a statement to inform the public.
"They could have done all of that in about two hours on Saturday. It is beyond me why it was not done this way."
The shooting victim, Harry Whittington, suffered a heart attack today when birdshot migrated to his heart but is still listed in stable condition.
Fitzwater pointed out that the White House had very set policies about handling unexpected events when he was there. "We had a very specific plan if the president or vice president were involved in any kind of incident like this," he told E&P. "It was a very precise plan of who would call who and how the information would get out."
Fitzwater, who served as White House press secretary from 1987 to 1992, was referring of course to Cheney's accidental shooting on Saturday of attorney Harry Whittington during a hunting trip at a Texas ranch. Although Whittington has survived he is still hospitalized. Cheney and the White House have been slammed for not revealing the incident to the press until late Sunday, hours after news outlets reported it.
Fitzwater, who also served as deputy presidential press secretary from 1982 to 1985 -- and press secretary to Vice President Bush from 1985 to 1986 -- stressed that the biggest error involved was not getting the information out right away.
"If [Cheney's] press secretary had any sense about it at all, she would have gotten the story together and put it out. Calling AP, UPI, and all of the press services. That would have gotten the story out and it would have been the right thing to do, recognizing his responsibility to the people as a nationally elected official, to tell the country what happened," Fitzwater added.
"Secondly, it would have been confined to the vice president. By not telling anyone for 24 hours, it made it a White House story. Now it has become 'when was the president notified?', 'why didn't he put it out?' It becomes a story about the White House handling of it."
Marlin Fitzwater disagrees with you...not that he knows anything about how to handle media.
I think you are right, but when that was not the case? Maybe for a few months in 1994. Voters do a remarkably good job of seeing past the press to the real issues.
Still, I don't expect the party to do so well in the next elections. This will not be because of Cheney's trivial accident, but because of the real failures of our Republican federal government, especially their utter failure to restrain spending. Can any Republican spokesperson stand up in front of a crowd and say, "Vote Republican! My party won't waste your money like Democrats do!" In 1994 that would have sounded credible and powerful, and now it sounds like a bad joke. We've tossed away one of our main issues.
This is so yesterday. Didn't this guy get the memo to start screaming about port shipping management?
When is it going to stop being the case, or rather, when is our side going to stop it from happening?
There a whole lot of victim mentality to your statement.
I don't think that Joe Average Voter cares all that much about government spending as long as the economy is humming..and it is, which is why the left has abandoned their historical battle plan of attacking Repubs on the economy, and is trying to raise scandal in what has been, albeit a disaster at public image management, a great, scandal free administration.
If the party does not do well in the next election (I don't expect the Senate to roll over t the DNC, but stranger things have happened), it won't be because of the Cheney incident, but rather as a reaction to the sum total of small PR blunders, including the Cheney incident, committed by the administration this past year that eroded a vote here and there.
Take a lesson from Florida 2000.
The plan was to keep counting until the election was stolen, one vote at a time, by redefining what constituted a valid vote with each recount.
The Miers incident eroded some voters, the wiretapping incident eroded some voters, the Cheney incident may have eroded some votes, and now the ports issue has Bush being lauded by Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton as the hero rushing in to stop the port deal from going down, and a whole lot of Republican Senators and Governors who are seeking re-election this year fighting against the WH.
No, just realism. I don't expect the film industry to become conservative, just as I don't expect the press to start giving conservatives a fair shake, or for Bush and Cheney to quickly master slick press management.
...when is our side going to stop it from happening?
Not soon. So far it has not been necessary to stop it from happening. We still have been winning elections, not because of our spin, but because of our substance. That's why I think that the excessive spending will hurt us. It is a genuine problem, and Republicans are responsible.
Most of my argument with you here is just that you chose to concentrate on the Cheney accident, which I think is politically trivial. You make a much better case against the administration's handling of the wiretapping affair, and the handling to date of the UAE ports issue. These are substantive political issues, and the administration has not defended its positions with the force and clarity that is needed to change minds.
As for Miers, I think we dodged a bullet. The spectacle of Teddy Kennedy et. al. sounding reasonable and authoritative on national television, as they demonstrated just how unqualified Miers was -- now that would have been a political disaster. As it was, the Alito hearings had to help Bush, and Kennedy looked like a nasty, immature, petulant loser, the thug who made Mrs. Alito cry. Maybe that wasn't managed press, but it sure was effective. Again, what was important was the substance, not the spin. Alito was, in fact, extremely well qualified for the job. That came across to the public, despite the MSM's efforts to block it.
How can Cheney's job approval be at 29%? Most republicans like him and it is a 50% 50% country. I do not get these polls.
Nelson is courting the fishing crowd and Caloosahatchee residents over massive releases from the big O and he's getting heard. If the Republicans want to take him on I hope they're going to court Lee County folks who are sick of watching Big Sugar dump on us while Stuart and other towns on the other side of the lake get little water.
We're undergoing huge growth over here but every spring, like clockwork, the red tides kill our tourism due to nutrient runoff from those protected growers.
The issue with these guys is STILL: why did he have to tell the Caller-Times reporter instead of US!
You forget the class of us who actually know something about hunting. A teaching collague of my wife went bow-hunting with a friend and ended up with an arrow in his chest. It is a big deal, but only because someone got hurt. To hell with the political games.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.