Tonight on national TV, Vice President Dick Cheney announced that, in the accidental shooting of his hunting pal Harry Whittington, the buck stopped with him. Sometimes, though, it takes three or four days for the buck to make it to its stop. (Maybe its plane was routed through LaGuardia during Sunday’s blizzard.) So it was that Cheney made his first public comments to Fox News’ Brit Hume, four days after shooting Whittington on a quail hunt.
His message: that he was sorry-to Whittington, but not to the national press or the public, who didn’t learn that the Vice President had shot a man until nearly a day after it happened. Seeming uncomfortable, his eyes often downcast, Cheney described the events as he recalled them: Whittington had gone off to retrieve a quail he had shot, Cheney said, while Cheney and another hunter walked off to target another covey of birds. Cheney spotted a bird, fired, then saw Whittington fall. “You can’t blame anybody else,” Cheney said. “I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend.”
But as for letting the news break, the next day, to the local newspaper in Corpus Christi, Tx., Cheney also took full responsibility-and said he’d do the same thing again. He said he made the decision (against the urging of the White House press staff) to ensure that Whittington’s family was notified first and out of deference to his host, the ranch owner who finally called the paper. In fact, Cheney suggested that the media outrage was just elitist whining over being scooped by a little Texas paper–a line of argument that Republican talking heads were repeating all over cable news even before the interview aired.
The rest of the press corps is not likely to be much happier that Cheney gave his only interview to Fox News and Hume, who spent much of the day hyping the scoop on other Fox shows-and even seemed to carry water for Cheney at times, suggesting repeatedly that Cheney was being gracious by saying that the accident was not Whittington’s fault.
Hume was hardly a powderpuff in the interview. He pressed Cheney on the defense that he held the news because Whittington’s condition was unclear: “You didn’t know the outcome, but you could argue that you don’t know the outcome today, really, finally.” He brought up the reports–drowned in the flurry of media birdshot over the shooting–that his indicted aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby reportedly said that “superiors” authorized the leak of information about CIA agent Valerie Plame. (Cheney declined comment.) He also asked if Cheney had been drinking the day of the shooting. (Yes, Cheney said, but only a beer at lunch, several hours before the accident.)
But as a channel, Fox is as close to home-field advantage as Cheney’s going to get on national TV. The conservative magazine National Review suggested on Tuesday that he do a sit-down with Hume. A few hours before the interview aired, Fox anchor Neil Cavuto opined that Cheney’s explanation of the events showed not that he had “a tin ear,” but rather “a heart, more for a friend he cares for than a Washington press corps he certainly does not.”
And Cheney has a history of turning to friendly outlets to weigh in on controversies. He’s called Rush Limbaugh, for instance, to try to defuse Richard Clarke’s criticisms that the Bush administration ignored the al Qaeda threat before 9/11.
Did Cheney’s act of contrition help him? Among the media, especially, a mea culpa might have ended the story–on Sunday. By Wednesday, the story was about the fact that he waited until Wednesday. Candor is like an unstable radioactive isotope; it has a short-half life, and it quickly decays the longer it goes unused.
But that’s among the media. For the general public, the story has been less about secrecy or Scott McClellan’s feelings or the protocol of hunting than the fact that the Vice President shot a guy. The fact that Cheney had his requisite Oprah moment on a TV show, any TV show, may be enough to stem the PR problem. That is, of course, unless Whittington takes a turn for the worse, or unless the press finds some substantive new controversy. I have a feeling that this interview won’t stop reporters from looking for one.