Although the shooting occurred last Saturday (
Friday?), Vice President Cheney's well-documented devotion to accuracy and his understandable concern over the health of the acquaintance he'd shot in the face meant the story did not break in time for discussion on the Sunday shows. A shame, I know. This Sunday--barring any further shootings by senior administration officials--I suspect the topic will garner a few minutes on them.
So I dug around in the old archives and pulled up a transcript (Nexis) of the "Capital Gang" from July 31, 1993--back when Vince Foster's suicide was a hot topic. You know, as a sort of prelude to the discussion we can expect this Sunday. Follow me through the jump, dear reader, for a trip down memory lane....
All bold and italic emphasis is mine. The brilliant emphasis inherent in the words of the people I'm quoting--that's all theirs.
HUNT: Welcome back. One week after Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster's apparent suicide, President Clinton revealed a final conversation with his lifelong friend.... The next day the White House revealed that it had found a crumpled, torn note by Foster, but not informed police for 30 hours.... Mona, is the White House exercising justifiable prudence or is there the potential for a cover-up here?
CHAREN: ... [A]s to the White House's handling of this, I think the President is running into that same old problem with his tendency initially, when news breaks, to deny it or to say, 'Well, we had no clue,' you know, and now as the news dribbles out, 'Well, there were clues, everybody knew he was depressed, he wrote this note.' It just makes them look bad, and I don't think there's evidence of a cover-up but I think it just shows that there's a tendency to be dishonest at the beginning.
Good. If past trends continue, it seems we can expect the punditry to treat the shooting as an "apparent" accident. And we can expect them to point out the Bush administration's tendency toward dishonesty. I hate to admit it, because it's really petty, but I'm looking forward to this--the liberal media, working for me (a liberal) asking the tough questions I want answered. Hooray for the liberal media!
HUNT: Bob?
NOVAK: ... [T]he problem is that this investigation has been mangled. Maybe--probably there's nothing to cover up, but if there were something to cover up, they would be conducting the investigation the way it is now. When you read in the paper--in The Washington Post--that the investigators said there has not been time to talk to Walker [sic] Hubble, who is the Associate Attorney General, law partner and friend of Mr. Foster and Hillary Clinton--what do you mean there's hasn't been time to talk to him? That should be given the first priority.
I'm sure there will be numerous mentions this Sunday of a "maybe," "probably there's nothing" cover-up. That will be delicious. I bet every guest and host will mention it at least once in one form or another.
And Bob Novak sure hits the nail on the head with that comment about how the suicide investigation should have been conducted. No doubt the pundits this Sunday will express similar concern about the investigation of Whittington's shooting: delays in getting statements from the "apparent" witnesses, inconsistencies in their stories, no blood-alcohol tests on Cheney, possible Secret Service obstruction of the Sheriff's investigation, and so on.
HUNT: Mark?
SHIELDS: Al, the detail, inconsistencies, and the delays certainly contribute to those who want to see a conspiracy here, plant suspicions or whatever, but I think again the lack of candor--they've treated this from the beginning like a suicide and not like a crime, and I think they had to treat it like both, and I think they had to be more forthcoming, and it's just raised suspicions further.
HUNT: You know, I agree. John, look I'm about 90 percent convinced that (a) there was nothing going--that this man just was clinically depressed and that that's what happened. It wasn't, you know, job-related in the sense of, you know, having something to do with policy or something bad there, and I'm also convinced that there's not an effort to cover up, but I'll tell you, the clumsy, awkward way--it wasn't just the 30 hours after the note. Four days before they found the note, I--in the beginning last week when we talked about this, I thought the idea of some kind of special counsel was absurd. I'm not so sure now. It seems to me for the sake of credibility, and actually in the long run for the sake of the Foster family. They don't need stories everyday on this. I mean, we just ought to get rid of this as quickly--
Shields makes a great point--Clinton was
way too quick to treat the suicide as a suicide and not a crime. Same goes for Cheney. Was the shooting really an accident (a
sober accident), or should it have been treated as a crime (a
drunken crime) from the get-go? I'm sure the pundits will ask just that question on Sunday. And I'm certain that one of the hosts will suggest some kind of special counsel--you know, for credibility and for the sake of Whittington's family. They don't need stories every day on this, after all.
Anyway, let me emphasize once again that this is petty. After all the stinging, harsh treatment the liberal media has given the Bush administration over the years--particularly on the Sunday shows--they probably don't deserve to be dragged over the coals this week. Not over such a minor news item as the Vice President shooting a man in the face, certainly. But I guess I'm petty. I love it when my liberal media tear the Bush people apart. It's going to be glorious.