Word: cheneys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much as possible about as much as possible. The President routinely asks what's going on in some of the darkest corners of the world. But last week George W. Bush's concerns included what was going on in an office down the hall, where Vice President Dick Cheney had been lying low since shooting his friend Harry Whittington in a late afternoon quail hunt in Texas over the weekend. Not just the communications pros and the commentariat but Bush too understood that Cheney needed to get out there and tell his story, but the Vice President was still resisting...
...Bush and Cheney had a quiet talk. According to a Republican official, the President told Cheney how much he too loved Whittington. He acknowledged what a crushing experience it must have been to see Whittington fall after Cheney pulled the trigger on a bird, failing to see his friend nearby. But it was time to defuse the furor that followed. Whittington was being blamed for the accident, and Cheney knew that White House spokesman Scott McClellan was getting barbecued by a White House press corps insistent on knowing why it took almost a full day to make the shooting public...
...MOMENTS LIKE THESE, SO TRIVIAL IN some ways yet so memorable in others, that can waste time on the political calendar in ways that are clear only to history. Bush and Cheney have barely over 1,000 days left and things they want to get done. But to succeed, they need to resist as long as possible the forces that make Administrations irrelevant. "Some people in the White House are worried that this will hasten the start of the formal lame-duck period, which they were hoping to put off until after the midterm elections," said a Republican official. "This...
What the hunting furor did, beyond occupying the airwaves for a week and stalling what momentum the President may have had, was expose in the most public way yet the extent to which Cheney runs an independent operation and raise the question of how much the White House can control him--or wants to. Cheney makes his own rules; he decides what intelligence matters, what secrets are worth keeping and what force is worth using, and he defends his positions with a breathtaking indifference to consequences and to complaint from those who disagree. He went off to spend a relaxing...
...thing to rebuff reporters to protect some policy or principle, a right Cheney has asserted many times before. But this time the only thing Cheney was protecting was himself. If Rule No. 1 of damage control is Get the news out fast, the second is Don't embarrass the boss. Breaking both rules at once is a poor idea. White House counselor Dan Bartlett, communications director Nicolle Wallace and McClellan all recommended to Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, and his deputy Karl Rove on Sunday, the day after the shooting, that the White House make an immediate statement...