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Thursday, February 08, 2007
The Phantom
I've come across this excellent dissection of Dick Cheney by Maureen Dowd, on Meet the Press the weekend after it became public that Cheney had shot a man in the face and delayed in releasing that information to the public. Dowd is explaining to Mary Matalin, who was rather ineptly defending Cheney, why Cheney's handling of the shooting was relevant:
The reason this story has evoked such fascination is because the vice
president is like the phantom. You know, we hear the creak of the door as he
passes, but we don't really know what he's up to. We don't know his schedule. We
don't always know where he is. We don't know what democratic institution he's
blowing off at any given minute, and so this allowed us to see how his behavior
and judgment operated pretty much in real time -- with the delay, but pretty
much in real time. ...
And it covered all the problems of the Bush/Cheney administration: secrecy
and stonewalling, then blowing off the rules that are at the heart of our
democracy, then using a filter to try and put the truth out in a way that would
most suit their political needs, and then bad political judgment in bungling a
crisis. I mean, if there's one thing the Republicans are great at since Reagan,
it's damage control. But he is such a control freak, you know, he doesn't even
care about the damage. ...
Mary, it isn't only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off
the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow
off everything. He's got a fever about presidential erosion just the way he had
a fever about going into Iraq.
If Cheney testifies for Libby, he won't be able to hide. It will all be out there.
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