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Cheney and Chappaquiddick
 “You
know a politician is in trouble when even
shooting a lawyer can’t boost his approval ratings.” Okay,
I’ve added my little bit to the glut of Dick Cheney (and lawyer) jokes.
Oh, have a couple more: “By now I suspect even President Bush has
heard about it.”
“If  Cheney
hadn’t had ‘other priorities,’ the
United States might have won in Vietnam.”
All kidding aside, the incident may
have deeper significance as a parable. An innocent man is shot, while the bird
gets away. The War on Terror in a nutshell.
The shooting occurred on
Saturday, and by Sunday night it was clear that Leno’s and
Letterman’s gag writers must already be meeting in emergency
session. Not since Monica Lewinsky had they been handed an opportunity like
this one.
How would the Republicans handle
this? The answer came the next day, when Rush Limbaugh opened his show
with ... a Chappaquiddick joke! Say what you will, the man’s spirit is
invincible, his wit inexhaustible. And you thought this incident would shut him
up, did you? You thought the Democrats would have the last laugh for once,
did you? Guess again. Republicans have a consoling saying in times of stress:
“We’ll always have Chappaquiddick.”
Then Rush found his own deeper
significance in the story. The liberal media were harping on it, he explained,
because here was a chance to embarrass the Bush administration! No doubt
if Cheney had slipped on a banana peel on Pennsylvania Avenue, they’d
had harped on that too, for the same reason. Rush is nothing if not
unpredictable. In a pinch, he’ll always have Chappaquiddick. (Notice how
the liberal media covered that up!)
I’m reminded of a stern
Catholic reader who assured me, after I wrote
a column on Mozart’s 250th
birthday, that the “only reason” the media noted the occasion is
that Mozart was a Mason. What’s more, he is now “roasting in hell.”
Without trying to excuse Mozart’s faults, I reflected that some people
may get indignant about too many things at once. I may be prone to this
myself when I think about the Bush administration.
Which brings me back to Cheney. If
you ask me, nobody in Washington has been more overdue for deflation. For a
while it looked as if the special prosecutor might achieve this, but he lacked
the necessary light touch. The task has now fallen to others.
![[Breaker quote for Cheney and Chappaquiddick: The Rush response]](2006breakers/060214.gif) In
the words of P.G. Wodehouse, “Meanwhile, Fate,
unseen, was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove.” The
moment Cheney squeezed the trigger, we may surmise, his pacemaker
skipped a beat. Imagine the thoughts that raced through his head as his
lawyer friend, 78 years old, slumped to the ground. Jail! Lawsuits!
Impeachment! The (liberal) media! How would he explain this to the boss, if it
got back to the Oval Office?
If? There was no way to cover it
up for more than a few hours. He would have to think fast. Even Karl Rove
would have a hard time spinning this one.
Fortunately, the lawyer
wasn’t gravely wounded, and anyway, he was whisked off to the
hospital in the ambulance that follows Cheney wherever he goes, now put to
an unforeseen use. When the dust settled, there would be no mug shots or
police lineups or, thank heaven, prosecutors, special or otherwise. Just a
little indignity. But wasn’t that bad enough? Cheney isn’t
usually associated with slapstick, but that’s what this whole thing
would look like to the public when it came out. If handcuffs or manacles were
bad, the Leno-Letterman pillory wasn’t a whole lot better. Cheney
could already hear the coast-to-coast guffaws.
Well, at least it wasn’t
Chappaquiddick or Monica Lewinsky, let alone Watergate. Let’s keep
this in perspective. As Rush was quick to point out, Cheney hadn’t left
anyone to die, or tried to cover up a criminal or cowardly act, or engaged in
absurd semantics. All the historical analogies worked in his favor.
All the same, the Bush
administration didn’t especially need more slapstick right now. With so
many crises hitting the fan at the same moment and his own party ready to
revolt, President Bush may be in no mood for historical perspective. The old
battle cry “We’ll always have Chappaquiddick” just
won’t cut it anymore.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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