Not a smart move on his part. Liberal Dems are like those jerko students in school who ran to the teacher saying "he said a bad word!!!" WHIMPS. LOSERS. But regardless, the first rule of a debate is that the first person to lose his cool has lost the argument. Poor choice of words, and on the very day the SCOTUS handed him a great victory. The Dems hated him for winning, and they clearly baited him into this. He should have known better.
Just about everybody gets heated and says something they regret at some point, but your absolutely right, Cheney should have known better. It's not like he's a stranger to these people. The fact that he has known them for decades probably helped them make him lose his cool, but nevertheless he lost it.
I've seen it here and on usenet and to an extent, letters to the editor in various publications. The moment somebody resorts to profanity or personal attacks in a discussion/debate, they've lost. I'll even admit to it happening a few times to me over the years.
I find it a bit disturbing that some are applauding him for saying this, yet were bashing Kerry's interview where he said it. It's either wrong for public officials to say something like that publicly, or it's not. It's not conditional and dependent upon which party the person saying it happened to belong to. Granted, they are in the minority and probably think uttering the f-word in such a situation is macho or something....