NOT SINCE Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton has a vice president taken so much flak for discharging a firearm. While Burr, the vice president of our beloved Mr. Jefferson, killed the former treasury secretary in a politically motivated duel, Dick Cheney's recent hunting mishap with a friend was by all accounts an accident. Yet, judging by some of the hysterical reactions from opponents in the media and the Democratic Party, Cheney might as well have maliciously wounded Al Gore or Hillary Clinton.
As much as detractors -- and even some allies -- tried to link Cheney's accident to their larger gripes against the administration, their responses were far more telling of our politics in general. They were a classic example of what Bill Clinton, speaking from personal experience, called "the politics of personal destruction." Cheney delayed disclosing and commenting on the accident not because of an invidious attempt to hide the truth, but because of personal embarrassment, plain and simple.
As a Republican, I will be the first to admit that my party had it coming to us after the humiliation we put Clinton through for his sexual escapades. Thus, I will merely play the role of the Democrats in 1998 by placing Cheney's accident in context.
Unlike Bill Clinton, who carried on an inappropriate relationship with an intern, sullied the Oval Office by having a sordid sex act performed on him there and committed perjury about the affair in a sexual harassment lawsuit, there was no allegation against Cheney of any wrongdoing or moral turpitude. True, Clinton was unsuccessfully impeached and never otherwise convicted criminally. But the Arkansas Bar did suspend his law license because of the acts, which for lawyers is tantamount to conviction.
By contrast, not so much as a civil suit has been filed against Cheney for negligence. Thus, Democrats who pounced on the accident may have merely invited comparison to their own embarrassments.
Speaking of embarrassments, while House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was denouncing Cheney's reticence as "another manifestation of the arrogance of power of the White House," another prominent Democrat who was notably silent was Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Again, the comparisons to Cheney's accident are not favorable for Democrats.
In the infamous 1969 incident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, Kennedy drove his car into a pond and killed a female passenger. While allegations that he was drunk were never proven, Kennedy did receive a suspended sentence of two months for leaving the scene of the accident and not calling the police promptly. By contrast, although there were nervous moments when the wounded Harry Whittington suffered some heart complications, he thankfully left the hospital in near-perfect shape. In fact, the worst charge against Cheney is that he failed to promptly call not the police (which he did), but the national media.
Even in light of the fact that politicians from both parties are only human and suffer embarrassing mishaps every now and then, the press has had a field day. At a White House news conference, one reporter suggested that Cheney should resign. Another tried to link the incident to the war in Iraq. Yet another parroted Democrats' comparisons of the incident to the administration's allegedly inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina. And on it went.
In a news report about the incident, The Washington Post felt it necessary to cede the soapbox to special interest groups for their own unrelated pet purposes. Sharing talking points, the president of PETA seized the occasion to denounce Cheney's "violent example," while the head of the Humane Society ranted against hunting as a "violent form of relaxation."
Highbrowed journalists may bemoan the increasing partisanship in Washington, but their feeding frenzy over Cheney's accident belied their true business. Without partisan brawls, no matter how petty, to report on, journalists have nothing to sell. Try as they will to blame politicians for the increasingly sharp rancor in Washington, the media need only look in the mirror to see who is truly feeding this beast. And perhaps the public, as willing consumers of this culture of conflict, deserve some blame ourselves.
Cheney waited a day to disclose his accident and four days before speaking out for the same reason that President Clinton stonewalled for nearly a year about "that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Regardless of when they went public, they knew the partisans and press alike would pounce. Faced with such unpalatable prospects, why rush?
Eric Wang's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavlierdaily.com
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007214&docId=l:357104566&start=1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021200524_2.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060216-1.html
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