Cheney shoots and hides; press look like the bad guys

There is no denying that some members of the Washington press corps were boorish in their reaction to the inability of the White House press office to provide an explanation of how Vice President Dick Cheney came to shoot a man Saturday.
The reaction was unfortunate because it gave Cheney and his supporters an opportunity to portray him as a victim and the press as unreasonable in its attempts to pry into his "private life."
When Cheney starts flying on commercial jetliners rather than Air Force Two and when he takes a cab rather than being part of a motorcade of a half-dozen government owned SUVs -- in other words, when he is no longer the man who is a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States, he can lay some claim to a private life.
But as long as he has the power and the perks of the vice presidency -- which include, we now learn, a doctor or physician's assistant and an ambulance at his side whenever he travels -- what he does is the public's business. And when he becomes the first vice president since 1804 to shoot someone, that not only becomes news, it is news that the vice president and the White House are obliged to share with the American public in a timely fashion.
Investigation over
An investigation by the Kenedy County, Texas, Sheriff's Department, which was based on an interview with the vice president the day after the shooting, has concluded that no charges are warranted. And President Bush, who was apparently so uninterested in the events that he didn't even bother to talk to Cheney until Monday, has declared himself satisfied with the vice president's behavior -- which included telling the president's press secretary to buzz off.
And apparently Cheney's decision to sit down with a hand picked anchorman for a half-hour interview four days after the shooting has mollified millions of Americans.
This comes as no surprise. Americans as a group have become far too comfortable with government secrecy and much too willing to see an inquiring press as an embarrassment rather than as window into what goes on in Washington.
But, for the record, we'll make a few observations.
Contradictions
Cheney made a point of defending his decision to use the owner of the ranch, rather than press office professionals, as the source for the story because it was "a complicated story" and the ranch owner, being an eyewitness, was the best source. "Accuracy," he said, "was enormously important."
And yet, the ranch owner, Katherine Armstrong, attempted to shift the blame for the accidental shooting on the victim, Harry Whittington, suggesting that he had put himself in the line of fire without alerting the vice president of his whereabouts. During his interview, Cheney repudiated that -- acknowledging that it is the duty of the shooter to know what he is shooting at and that the accident was fully his responsibility.
By making himself available only to Brit Hume of Fox news, Cheney avoided not only the unpleasantness that comes with subjecting yourself to the questions of multiple members of the press, but left unanswered questions that other reporters might have seen -- or been more willing to ask.
Little details such as this: the circumstances of the shooting still remain unclear.
To the right or left?
In her statement to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Armstrong said that after Whittington went to retrieve a bird he had shot he "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself. ... The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The sheriff's report said that Cheney told a deputy that a bird flew behind him, and he followed it in a counterclockwise direction and fired, not realizing Whittington had walked up behind him to rejoin the group.
Cheney told Hume that "the bird flushed and went to my right, off to the west. I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second, saw Harry standing there. Didn't know he was there."
Another reporter or two might have recognized an inconsistency and asked how, if the bird flushed to the right, the vice president turned counter clockwise to follow it before firing.
Clearly, entrusting to Katherine Armstrong the responsibility for telling the world how the vice president came to shoot (or pepper, if you will) a 78-year-old attorney was not the best plan. At least not if "accuracy was enormously important."
Never retreat
But even in his interview, even after the hubbub over his stonewalling and the obvious inadequacies of Armstrong as the primary recorder of history, the vice president would not be second-guessed. "I'm comfortable with the way we did it," he told Hume.
That level of comfort is grounded in Cheney's virtual inability to admit error. And in his obvious belief that what he does -- whether it's planning an energy policy with cronies, mulling over the merits of going to war or accidentally dropping a member of a hunting party at a lobbyist's ranch -- is not really the public's business. And he's confident that his getting misty-eyed during a soft interview with a single reporter will satisfy most of America that he's above reproach.
Unfortunately, too many people will buy what he's selling -- that those rude, noisy, prying reporters are the real problem.