At today's White House press briefing, Scott McClellan uttered the following with regard to the Vice President's recent misadventures: "I think the American people are looking at this and saying, enough already."
Opining as a card-carrying American Person, I wish to assure Mr. McClellan that his assumption is pure horsepucky. We can't get enough.
As our late night raconteurs have aptly demonstrated in recent days, this week's events have taught this nation how to laugh again. At last, we've found a story that we can all celebrate: our number two man has ended a two-century drought of vice presidential gunplay.
It's no secret that the Vice President is a major-league asshole, big time. He's at his best among ad hominem attacks, shameless fearmongering and senatorial profanity. But a man who travels halfway around the world to attend a Saudi prince's funeral, yet doesn't head across town to the hospital to visit a friend he just capped? This is uncharted territory, even for Mr. Cheney.
The travails of the grimacing triggerman provide further evidence of this administration's comfort in vague, abstract concepts over cold, hard reality. They have hinged their ideology upon the most malleable and subjective of notions, like "evil" and "freedom." When facts get in the way of such shadowy entities, the administration can bend them toward any subjective ends that fit their means.
But when reality hits back with a sucker punch--be it 9/11, Katrina, or Quailgate--these "decisive leaders" sure clam up fast. Dancing rhetorical pirouettes around their straw men concepts is one thing, but putting spin on a faceful of birdshot is quite another. Thus emerge the iconic images of painful hesitation--Mr. Bush frozen in that Florida classroom, or idly strumming his guitar while New Orleans drowned.
In the face of last weekend's crisis, Mr. Cheney responded just as he and Mr. Bush did when the reality of Vietnam came calling: He hid. So we're left to conjure up our own images of his immediate aftermath. Perhaps the bald-pated marksman hurriedly cleaning up the beer cans in the kitchen. Or, hand to jowl, recognizing the irony that his own Chapaquiddick had just occurred in Kenedy County.
Ultimately, the president must realize that while the buck stops with him, so too does the buckshot. Mr. Bush had the opportunity Saturday night to remind his sidekick who's boss, and order him to come clean. Yet once again, exercising the boundless expanse of his sense of loyalty, Mr. Bush deferred to his compadre's wishes.
Even several days later, the New Haven Texan continued to stand by his man. Following the Vice President's "interview" with "journalist" Brit Hume, the president expressed his "satisfaction" with the Veep's actions. Only this president could conjure up satisfaction at a time like this.
As they signed off for the night last evening, one can imagine Mr. Bush's parting words to his lieutenant. "You're doing a heck of a job, Frownie."
[Astute readers will note that this entry's image does not match its written content. This is intentional. In the face of such ugliness, I have provided a healing nation with one sight upon whose beauty we can all agree.]
Has anyone else noticed that Iranian President Mahmoud Armageddonjad has donned sportcoats more often since his country's announcement this week that they have enriched uranium? To be sure, it's a welcome respite from the usual Members Only beige windbreaker. Still, one wonders about the timing.
