Why Dick Cheney can't dig himself out

Vice President Dick Cheney blamed the media last week for the uproar over his hunting accident. He suggested to Fox News' Brit Hume that the White House press corps was in a snit because they were scooped by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Nice try.

The issue here is not media coverage but abuse of power. The vice president accepted, perhaps demanded, special treatment from law enforcement.

First, the local sheriff's deputy was kept from interviewing Mr. Cheney until the morning after the accident. Then the Secret Service -- trained observers and federal law enforcement officers -- would not release a report of the incident, even though the agents were eyewitnesses who also provided medical attention and transportation for the victim.

It adds a whole new meaning to "Secret Service protection."

The vice president told Brit Hume that he had a beer with lunch, and hunting party hostess Katherine Armstrong said Mr. Cheney mixed himself a drink back at the house after the incident.

Certainly anyone who is involved in an accident would prefer not to have a public record stating that alcohol may have been a factor.

So the next time you're involved in an accident, tell the little officer who questions you that you'd like him to come back the next morning to ask his little questions, because you're very busy.

Don't think it will work?

It will work if you hold an office so powerful that you can pick up the phone and ruin the little officer's career. You don't even have to say it. Not when everyone in Texas knows you're on a first-name basis with every Republican elected official in the state.

It's an abuse of power to accept special treatment from law enforcement.

It's too late for a prompt and unrestrained investigation into the hunting accident. But it's not too late for the vice president to demand that the Secret Service release a detailed report and even make its agents available to the press. That's what it's going to take if he wants to be believed, and respected.


Copyright 2006

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