Lame duck or lame quail?

Time Magazine tells us that it was Bush who finally had to order Cheney to make a public statement before Cheney finally agreed.

But last week George W. Bush's concerns included what was going on in an office down the hall, where Vice President Dick Cheney had been lying low since shooting his friend Harry Whittington in a late afternoon quail hunt in Texas over the weekend. Not just the communications pros and the commentariat but Bush too understood that Cheney needed to get out there and tell his story, but the Vice President was still resisting. Until Cheney said something, Bush couldn't talk to reporters either. There would be no other story, no other message than that the Vice President of the United States had accidentally shot a man and was refusing to talk about what had happened. It was clear to those who talked to Cheney that he was truly dismayed. "If this were happening to someone else, he'd be ho-ho-ho-ing about the feeding frenzy," said a former Cheney aide. "But he has caused the feeding frenzy here." Whatever Cheney's reasons, his reticence was frustrating the President, said an official involved in deliberations between the two. Yet even now, Bush made a very soft sell to the partner to whom he often defers.

The article goes on to put the brew-ha-ha into some context:

For a President desperate to turn the corner after a wretched 2005, last week's circus was the last thing he needed. This has been a season of doubt about the Administration's competence, candor and instinct. In serial scenes of domestic violence, Republicans are attacking their own. An all-Republican House panel concluded last week that Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff made decisions during Hurricane Katrina "late, ineffectively or not at all." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was grilled about Iraq by cranky Republican Senators: "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better," said Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. "I think things are getting worse. I think they're getting worse in Iraq. I think they're getting worse in Iran." Over at the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican chairman Pat Roberts suggested that the National Security Agency's no-warrant surveillance program could come under the authority of a special court, while at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican chairman Arlen Specter continued to raise questions about the program's legality. "You cannot have domestic search-and-seizure without a warrant," Specter said. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney publicly criticized Bush for the failures of the hugely expensive Medicare prescription-drug plan.

What the hunting furor did, beyond occupying the airwaves for a week and stalling what momentum the President may have had, was expose in the most public way yet the extent to which Cheney runs an independent operation and raise the question of how much the White House can control him—or wants to. Cheney makes his own rules; he decides what intelligence matters, what secrets are worth keeping and what force is worth using, and he defends his positions with a breathtaking indifference to consequences and to complaint from those who disagree. He went off to spend a relaxing—and unannounced—weekend hunting with friends who also happened to be donors and lobbyists at a time when both species find themselves under fire. And it turned into a nightmare for everyone involved.

All I can say it, the sooner these guys are lame ducks, the better.