Passing the Buckshot

Some of the right wing bloggers have suggested that the media is making too much of the fact that Dick Cheney shot another man.  I agree. We should remember that this is the same guy who nominated himself for the vice-presidency, assured us that Saddam had ties to Bin Laden, insisted that Iraq had WMD, told us the insurgency was on its last legs, and who five years ago was charged with “fixing” the administration’s energy policy.  In that context, Mr. Shoot First Answer Questions Four Days Later’s most recent adventure does indeed seem very minor.  I haven’t even mentioned that this is the guy who Lewis Libby, currently indicted for obstruction of justice’s, reported to directly.  Really, why sweat the small stuff?  Has anyone noticed that the vice-president appears to be blatantly incompetent?

There are certain things I have noticed over the last couple days.

1. the vice president actually does have at least one friend with a heart.


2. No one knows what happened to the Ambassador to Switzerland these last couple days.


3. I really wouldn’t object if the VP wants to take Justice Scalia hunting again.


4. That wasn’t much of a spread for a shotgun shell at that distance, he should consider asking the ammo company for his money back.  Just imagine if the VP really had to protect himself from rampaging game birds.  

If nothing else, the events of the last four days once again brings home the power of narrative in shaping public opinion.  You’ve had five years, actually a whole career, of one guy who has established a record of being repeatedly wrong on most everything down to picking a chief of staff, yet it’s been as if the general public was completely unable to notice.  It didn’t matter how many reports there were out there about Halliburton contracts or how obvious it was who must have directed Scooter Libby.
What matters is that there is now this movie in the public’s head of the vice president shooting hundreds of little birds then firing without looking first.  Suddenly, once it gets the movie, the public sees all the other stuff.  If you want to win the war of public opinion, you have to get the sequence right.  

We have mid-term elections coming up.  It isn’t that often that the movies/stories get handed to us.  Is there anyone out there who is going to give America the story it needs to see that this has been a .28 guage administration? ?    





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