c. he concealed his true nastiness the better to ingratiate himself to those who could help him politically.
Squeaky Fromme?
I don’t see why Ford’s opinion is all that relevant - and I say that as someone who respects him a good deal more than most liberals do (and a good deal more than I respect most Republicans, for that matter).
Ford probably had minimal contact with Cheney after he left office, and people can change an awful lot in 20 years, with or without heart attacks.
[
](Dick Cheney - Wikipedia):eek:
While I hold no brief for Cheney’s likeability or integrity (beyond the one instance I noted upthread), I have to protest the level of spin on this one, which could be downright misleading for anyone who doesn’t remember the actual quail-hunt incident.
Cheney injured a friend in a hunting accident, and the friend later said in a press conference that he and his family felt “deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with.” That’s an expression of sympathy, not an apology for having been shot, and I know of no evidence that Cheney “made” his friend say it.
Well he knew Cheney had a gun.
I’m not a fan of Cheney, but do we know if Cheney spun around, or if the friend went down the firing line in their hunting direction?
Just reading about a loathesome public figure here for shits and giggles, but about the “accident” - wasn’t it bandied about that Cheney’s GIRLFRIEND was the one who accidentally shot the guy in the face and he took the blame/credit for it?
I’ve never heard of any rumors that Pamela Williford, who was the only female member of the shooting party, is Dick Cheney’s girlfriend, although she is a family friend of the Bushes.
As for the immediate cause of the accident, it looks to my totally-ignorant-of-quail-shooting-procedure view as though both Cheney and Whittington got focused on other things (Whittington on finding a downed bird, Cheney on moving to another covey) and forgot to keep track of each other’s whereabouts.
Back to my hijack about Cheney’s personality and his hard-drinking ways—I remember when the hunting accident happened, there was an initial statement saying that absolutely NO alcohol was consumed by any members of the hunting party, and it was high treason to even suggest that there was drinking involved. (and Lord knows that NO upstanding fieldsman has ever had a few brews on a Texas quail outing)
Later it was revealed that there may have indeed been some beer consumed by several members of the group, but only one(!) can each, and Cheney probably didn’t even finish his…
I think Dick Cheney is a bed-wetting, blackout alcoholic who may go through long stretches of sobriety, but even when he is not actively drinking, alcohol is a HUGE factor in his mercurial personality.
Which one . he has had at least 4.
Or Cheney is a politician, schmoozed Ford (to get Ford to push him for VP perhaps, or maybe Cheney was just “politicking”) so Ford only saw one side of Cheney - the side Cheney wanted him to see.
He was pretty low profile back then, publicly speaking. People wouldn’t know much on him unless they actively sought it out.
Your possibilities are also valid ones, just adding another possibility.
That all sounds really reasonable, but no. Am accidental shooting victim is at zero fault, every time. The shooter has 100% responsibility to handle a firearm in a safe way. Cheney did not do so.
Okay. I wasn’t trying to assign or apportion blame to the parties in this particular accident, I was just trying to answer Cardinal’s question about how it happened to come about.
While I can think of hypothetical cases where a shooting victim did something really dumb or irresponsible that helped precipitate the accident, I think it sounds like a reasonable and just policy to officially assign 100% of the responsibility to the shooter, no matter what the circumstances. Your trigger, your finger, your bad.
Ahh yes, the dark days of the “strategic mineral” gap!
CMC fnord!
Thanks for the acknowledgement. I didn’t think you were assigning blame, I was trying to clarify. Sorry I implied otherwise.
That shooting accident really chapped my hide re Cheney. The incident was disclosed to local press by the owner of the ranch, with an unlikely story that implicated the victim for being shot. The incident happened on Feb 11, 2006, and Cheney hid from the press until Feb 15, finally appearing on Fox News and accepting blame. Did Cheney really think that he could lie low after wounding someone with a shotgun and it would all go away? This attitude made things ten times worse for him.
I’m glad to hear that Cheney accepted blame for the shooting. I didn’t watch him on Fox although I had heard that he had chosen to make an appearance there and nowhere else.
Did he also express his sympathy to the man he shot and to his family?
Kimstu, I agree that the friend who was shot was offering his sympathy for causing Cheney so much trouble. I just can’t read it any other way.
One thing that I didn’t like about Cheney was how he would say something and they lie about having said it. He would do this over and over. You would think that he would have known better than to do than on Meet the Press. Tim Russert always had the video of his saying it.
I’m not impressed by his criticism of Obama on those occasions when the criticism is so obviously shaped to fool the public.
Most of all, I don’t like war criminals. The torture of Guantanamo prisoners is just part of it.
There just doesn’t seem to be anything honorable about him.
Cheney’s staff was responsible for outing Plame and harming the CIA. His aid Libby fell on the sword . When Cheney was interviewed about it, it was kept secret. He claimed executive privilege like he was the president. (he may have been). But he did great harm to the country and he walked.
Ford was a professional politician and a member of the House leadership before being president. He is not the type to associate disagreement over issues with evil. He knows that there are unpleasant people who share your politics and very nice people who do not. Given that Cheney has been a player for 4 decades in a town built on personal relationships, it is unlikely that he is a disagreeable person. It is a sign of the immaturity of so much of our political discourse that so many people equate disagreement with their opinions with genuine evil.
Huh? What makes you think that a disagreeable person can’t succeed in playing politics? I can think of several notorious counterexamples.
And this is why someone like Cheney doesn’t have to be an agreeable person in order to be a player in national politics. He’s very smart and an efficient administrator, so he can get away with being unpleasant.