A Cheney Resignation????

I promised myself that I wouldn't write about the Cheney hunting accident. If ever there was a non-story, this is it. The press's (to say nothing of the old blogosphere's) obsession with Cheney's role in the shooting only shows (yet again) how completely juvenile the press can be. It reminds me of nothing so much as the giggling fits junior high school boys have when someone farts. And their biggest gripe is not that he shot his friend but that he wouldn't talk to the press. Why should he talk to the press, for crying out loud? Apart from the fact that the VP was involved, this would not even be news. And, when the only newsworthy thing about a story is that someone famous was involved, reporting on it is not journalism, it is gossiping. A refusal to feed the paparazzi is hardly the basis for outrage -- except among the paparazzi, of course.

So, I was disgusted but not all that surprised to find that the lead stories in the e-mail versions of both the New York Times and the Washington Post were entitled, respectively "Silence Broken as Cheney Points Only to Himself" and "Cheney Says Shooting Was His Fault [subtitle]But He Stands By Decisions On Disclosure." Further, both of the Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and on in the Wall Street Journal were devoted to this "story." As if Cheney's interview on Fox yesterday was THE most important thing to happen in the world.

While I didn't -- nor will I -- see the interview or read the transcript, the statements attributed to Cheney (even I can not completely avoid hearing about this incident) do him credit. He blamed no one but himself and appears to be genuinely anguished about it. The fact that anguish and blame-taking are not attributes one normally associates with our VP makes this confession seem all the more real and actually helps to humanize a man who has (with considerable justification) become the Great Satan of domestic politics.

But none of that is what led me to break my vow of silence on shotgun-gate. Rather it was two editorials, one by Bob Herbert at the New York Times and another by Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journall suggesting that this incident might be (in the case of Noonan) and should be (in the case of Herbert) the catalyst that leads Bush to jettison Dick Cheney.

Huh? What ARE these people smoking?

I guess I shouldn't be too categorical about this possibility. Washington is just too strange a place to say confidently that this or that could never happen. And the fact that two so diverse people as Herbert and Noonan came out with the same suggestion on the same day gives the conspiracy-theorist in me pause. Is it possible that this idea did not pop unbidden into each of their minds? Could both actually be tied to some "trial balloon" floated by someone powerful enough to actually get Cheney fired (e.g. Grover Norquist, or William Kristol or Pat Robertson)?

Or, could it be that the "birdie" whispering to Herbert an Noonan is actually Cheney himself? Is it Cheney who wants to quit and is looking for political cover?

That last is an interesting possibility, and would not be inconsistent with what we know of the personalities involved.

The idea that Bush would dump Cheney seems so far-fetched as to be almost laughable. Given the conventional wisdom regarding Cheney's role in the Administration, a report that Cheney was on the verge of dumping Bush would actually be more plausible. Moreover, even if Cheney isn't in charge, there is another problem: Bush doesn't fire people, since doing so is an implicit admission of error. And, admitting error, even implicitly, is something Bush just . . . does . . . not . . . do. Oh sure, he did finally fire Brownie and he did finally "fire" Harriet Miers. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule: it took cataclysms of opposition (and in Brownie's case, at least, incompetence) so great as to threaten Republican control of government to persuade him to cut his losses. And, neither of these people had anything like Dick's clout.

So, unless Herbert and Noonan are just out to lunch, the only possibility that makes any sense is that Cheney himself wants out. That's not impossible. For all of his hubris -- or perhaps because of it -- Cheney may have just gotten sick of the bullshit. One can almost imagine him saying to himself, "Ah Maureen and all of you other contemptible Lilliputians, go f#@k yourselves! I'm blowing this pop stand and going somewhere where I can make real money and have real power and where I don't have to put up with your prying, niggling little questions and constant griping. I'm going back to Haliburton. Oh, and getting paid $250K per shot to lambast all you idiots on the lecture circuit has some considerable appeal as well."

Hmmm. Stay tuned.