By now just about everyone knows that Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington last Saturday. Cheney and four other hunters spent the morning hunting, took a break for lunch and then went out for a second quail hunt after lunch at the Armstrong ranch in Texas. Apparently, Whittington left the standard hunting formation without signaling the other hunters and Cheney accidentally shot him while aiming for a bird. Whittington was then taken to the hospital for treatment.
By now just about everyone has lost interest in the story, too.
But unfortunately, the story does not end there. White House Chief of State Andrew Card informed President Bush of the accident sometime that evening, and advisor Karl Rove informed him of Cheney's involvement shortly thereafter. No information was released to the public until the following day, when Katherine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch, called a local reporter for The Corpus Christi Caller-Times that morning. The newspaper posted a story online that afternoon, at which point the Associated Press followed up on it and released a wire story.
Half of the White House press corps apparently had coronaries about the same time, because they really let Scott McClellan have it at the Monday press briefing. Journalists were furious not just that no information had been made public on the day of the accident, but that Cheney and his staff left it to Armstrong to publicize the accident instead of immediately notifying the White House press corps and issuing a statement. Cheney did not make any public comments until that Wednesday, when he spoke with FOX News' Brit Hume.
In one particularly testy encounter at that same Monday press briefing, NBC News' David Gregory ripped into McClellan, demanding to know whether McClellan thought the handling of the accident was appropriate or whether more should have been done to notify the public at an earlier time. McClellan told Gregory to stop grandstanding for the cameras - which, even though the cameras were off at the time, Gregory has certainly done over the past year - and Gregory responded by calling McClellan a jerk and demanding that he answer Gregory's questions. The two then exchanged more words outside the briefing room.
Yes, Gregory apologized online and on NBC's Meet the Press, but nevertheless, are you kidding me? Was this really that newsworthy in the first place? The Vice President was involved in an unfortunate and embarrassing hunting accident that was not made public in the speediest of ways because of its embarrassing and upsetting nature and out of concern for Whittington's health. Heaven forbid that self-important members of the Fourth Estate such as Gregory should be kept out of the loop for so much as a day. While Gregory may see himself as a surrogate for the people and a defender of their right to know in spite of what he considers an overly secretive administration, but I submit that the American people were never as interested in this story - or in most of the unsubstantial stories in the media - as the media may like to think.
Democrats, of course, wasted no time following the media's lead, charging that the White House's publicizing of the accident is indicative of its overly secretive nature. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called the Bush administration the most secretive in history. For months I have been hearing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sens. Dick Durban and Hillary Clinton and DNC Chairman Howard Dean rail about a culture of corruption and a secretive administration. Well, now they have one more item to add to their list of things that they do not like about the Bush administration.
What annoys me about this is that all Democrats can do is laundry list mistakes that they think that the Bush administration has made. Maybe Cheney should have been more forthcoming about his hunting accident, but somehow I think that there are more important issues facing the country right now and that Democrats are not putting forth any new ideas. They have been trying to beat something with nothing ever since President Bush took office, and I hope that the American people do not reward them with control of either house of Congress in the midterm elections because that would be tantamount to condoning this naysayer strategy that too many opposition parties, Democrat and Republican, have employed too many times in the past.
As far as the media is concerned, their childish outbursts in the White House briefing room and on the cable news shows simply enable and encourage this childish behavior among Democrats. If the media really think that the American people care about Gov. Mike Dukakis driving a tank, President George H.W. Bush throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister, President Clinton's extramarital affairs, Vice President Gore's earth-tone wardrobe, or Cheney's hunting accident, then they have no respect for the real issues that concern Americans today. Both the media and Democrats need to start taking the American people seriously.
Jonathan D. McPike is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences, and is The Eagle's moderate columnist.
