Editorials Hit Cheney, White House, for Delay on Shooting

By: E&P Staff While late-night comics have their way with the Cheney shooting episode--even Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank turned up on MSNBC in an orange hunting vest--editorialists at newspapers took a, by and large, far more serious look at the odd delay by the vice president and the White House in reporting the incident.

Milbank's paper, The Post , took one of the hardest lines, declaring that "the failure to act properly is truly disturbing in its implications."

Here is a sampling of opinion today:

The Washington Post:

What makes little sense, however, was the White House's decision, according to press secretary Scott McClellan, to defer disclosure of the shooting incident to the vice president's office, and that office's decision to further defer to the owners of the ranch. Mr. Cheney did not check his official title at the Armstrongs' front gate. That was no private citizen who pulled the trigger, sending someone to the hospital. That act, though accidental -- and doubtless both agonizing and embarrassing -- was committed by the country's second-highest public official. Neither Mr. Cheney nor the White House gets to pick and choose when to disclose a shooting. Saturday's incident required immediate public disclosure -- a fact so elementary that the failure to act properly is truly disturbing in its implications.

The Houston Chronicle:

The administration's failure to alert news media to a weekend shooting accident in which Vice President Dick Cheney pulled the trigger has magnified a minor incident into something far more substantial: a symbol of the disdain shown by the nation's top leaders for timely and truthful public disclosure....

Cheney should have flown with the victim to the hospital and then held a news conference to fully disclose the incident and take responsibility for his part in it. Instead, he headed back to his administrative bubble in Washington and let his aides pass the buck until it finally reached a Texas ranchwoman with common sense and a refreshing respect for public disclosure and the role of the news media.

The New York Times:

The vice president appears to have behaved like a teenager who thinks that if he keeps quiet about the wreck, no one will notice that the family car is missing its right door. The administration's communications department has proved that its skills at actually communicating are so rusty it can't get a minor police-blotter story straight. And the White House, in trying to cover up the cover-up, has once again demonstrated that it would rather look inept than open.

San Francisco Chronicle:

There's an arrogance about the incident that pushes it past the first level of jokes and White House embarrassment. A relatively small event in the scheme of world affairs now takes on extra significance, all due to a White House that can't face reality.

Albany (N.Y.) Times Union:

Accidents happen. But the vice president, of all people, should know how to properly respond to one.

Perhaps now he'll be more forthcoming -- and a little less smug. Back during the 2004 presidential campaign, Mr. Cheney had his fun with rival John Kerry going on a hunting trip. "He wore a brand new camouflage jacket for the occasion, which makes you wonder just how often he does really go goose hunting," Mr. Cheney said, according to a White House transcript cited by The Boston Globe. "My personal opinion was his camo jacket was an October disguise. ... "