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Dick Cheney: Misfiring Under Pressure
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
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Dick Cheney, vice president to George W. Bush, has never liked or trusted the mainstream media, particularly the Washington press corps. During his tenure in the White House, he didn’t court reporters, editors, or key media decision makers, and his press conferences and interviews were few and far between. Cheney’s basic approach to dealing with the media has been to treat them as a necessary evil of his office, but still to avoid them whenever possible. He kept them at a distance regarding his early meeting with an energy task force, and butted heads with them regarding the Valerie Plame affair. Such an attitude toward the media may have contributed heavily to what just might be the dumbest communication decision in recent history, following Cheney’s much-publicized “shooting a friend while hunting” accident.This case raises the bar for stupidity in crisis communication. It is a good illustration of how a poor communication plan can turn an innocent accident into a national tempest. There is no doubt that the accident itself was not the cause of the controversy and ensuing crisis (although such an accident clearly is newsworthy and certainly makes great fodder for Dick Cheney MISFIRING UNDER PRESSURE 57 Vice President Dick Cheney was thinking that the accidental shooting of his friend while on a hunting trip was a private matter that did not require an immediate and official public disclosure. What were they thinking?. Leaders in the public eye who choose to withhold information make matters worse by creating the appearance of a cover-up. The Lesson. Adubato_final_book 5/20/08 4:31 PM Page 57 comedians and late-night talk-show hosts). Rather it was the absurd and inappropriate fashion in which Dick Cheney handled the communication responsibilities surrounding the event, combined with his history of evasiveness, that caused him and the White House so much grief. A Hunting Trip Gone Bad On late Saturday afternoon, February 11, 2006, Dick Cheney was hunting quail with a group of friends in Corpus Christi, Texas, when the vice president—the person who is a heartbeat away from being the president—accidentally shot his seventyeight -year-old friend and fellow hunter, Texas lawyer Harry Whittington.Whittington was hit with scattered buckshot in the neck and face at relatively close range. He was brought to a local hospital as Cheney and the hunting party did all they could to help Whittington through this trying and difficult time. The hunting party then retired to the home of Katharine Armstrong, a lobbyist and land owner who was hosting the private hunting group on her Texas property. During this time of concern over the serious condition of a friend, could Dick Cheney be expected immediately to report the incident to the White House communication staff? Apparently he did not think so. Late that Saturday night, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was informed that there had been a shooting accident in the Cheney hunting party. But he didn’t know until the next day that it was Cheney who shot Whittington.1 In fact, twentyfour hours later, when Cheney called the White House to speak to Chief of Staff Andrew Card, he didn’t disclose the full details of how Whittington had been shot. So at that point even those in critical communication positions in the White House were left in the dark by the vice president.You and I can see that this is going to look bad for the entire Bush administration—and the 58 WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Adubato_final_book 5/20/08 4:31 PM Page 58 [18.204.35.30] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:20 GMT) bungling of the communication regarding the accident was just starting. On the day following the shooting, Armstrong—a private citizen with no official ties to the White House—was given the task of informing a local Texas newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, about the incident.The newspaper posted the story on its Web site late Sunday. The story was then picked up by media organizations across the country. The communication that followed from the White House attempted to make the argument that Dick Cheney was on a private hunting expedition (the reason Katharine Armstrong as a private citizen was the one who disclosed it) and that in fact HarryWhittington may have actually contributed to the accident by being in the wrong place as Cheney was shooting (the White House quickly backed off that argument...