Troubling Questions About Cheney's Boss
Why is the vice president getting nearly all the blame for keeping his shooting escapade secret last weekend? President Bush either kept it hidden just as long--or, equally disturbing, maybe he did not find out about Cheney's role as shooter until much later. By Greg Mitchell
February 14, 2006) -- While Vice President Cheney continues to catch flak for grossly mishandling the aftermath of the shooting in Texas last Saturday, it is amazing that, relatively speaking, his boss, President Bush, is not drawing just as much blame. True, Cheney deserves extra scrutiny for breaking several cardinal rules of hunting when he plugged Mr. Whittington, and for whatever else he may be hiding.
But as for the slow reporting of the incident—with a nod to Watergate we will call it "the 18 ½ hour gap"—why is the media dumping it mainly on Vice when perhaps it should be versa? Isn’t the president in charge here?
Good question. And what if the president, contrary to the official story, was not told about Cheney as shootist on Saturday night?
-snip-
Note in all this: no mention of the president. What we seem to know for certain is that his press secretary was not told about Cheney’s role until 6 a.m. on Sunday.
In other words, if we accept the White House version of events, Bush was informed about 8 p.m. Saturday—and did not inform his press secretary until the next morning, did not talk to his vice president, in fact, did not seem to have any input on telling or holding the story.
So why isn’t Bush getting hammered for that? Why is so much of the focus on Cheney? The president of the United States, in this version, heard about his veep shooting a man in the face and chest and did not direct him or anyone else to report this to the nation? In fact, based on her original quotes, we might assume that we would have never heard about it at all if Katharine Armstrong had not tipped off the local reporter.
So, at a minimum, accepting Bush’s story at face value, he should be sharing blame on the 18 ½ hour gap, or even taking the lion's share, since he is, supposedly, the man in charge.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001998206 edit to add - look at this from todays NYT:
Several White House officials said
no one among the White House staff, including the chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., felt empowered to dictate how news of the accident would be handled.
Presumably Mr. Bush could have declared how the news would be disseminated, something he does often on policy matters. Until this week, the periodic disconnect between Mr. Cheney's office and the rest of the White House has been the source of grumbling, but rarely open tension. The most notable exception came in August 2002, when Mr. Cheney, delivering a speech about Iraq, spoke so disparagingly about the utility of past United Nations weapons inspections that he left the impression that the administration would never again use inspections in an effort to assess the threat of Saddam Hussein.
In fact, Mr. Bush had decided to try to send inspectors back in, at least for a while, and it was left to Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, to call Mr. Cheney and get him to strike that wording from a speech he was giving a few days later.
In the past five years,
Mr. Cheney has grown accustomed to having a power center of his own, with his own miniature version of a national security council staff. It conducts policy debates that often happen parallel those among Mr. Bush's staff.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/politics/15veep.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin"Presumably" the Prez could tell the VP what to do - presumably.
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