Dick Cheney's Problem

Paul Greenberg, a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist who is hardly known as a leftwinger, examines Dick Cheney's suspicious strategy to delay the reporting of his hunting mishap. The savvy Greenberg isn't buying the Veep’s flimsy story:

“Even though presidential counselor Dan Bartlett and the president’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, both advised [Cheney] to get the story out -- widely -- as soon as he could. But the best advice is of no use if one doesn’t take it, and the vice president didn’t. Instead, he left it to his hostess, Katharine Armstrong of the Armstrong Ranch in South Texas, to tell the local Corpus Christi Caller-Times about a story of far more than local interest. As if this were an item for its Society Notes. The vice president, brainy man that he is, still claims that was the right call -- since the news would then have come from his hostess, who was there, and, besides, if the story had gone out Saturday night instead of the next day, it might have been incomplete. As if this story is going to be complete any time soon.

“...Leaders who are trusted tend to be those who trust the rest of us to be fair. Which is why the best way to manage the news may be not to try so hard to manage it -- just tell it the way it happened. And don’t wait till you’ve got all your quail in a row for Fox News.”