Media Outrage of the Week: Cheney is a Working Vice-President, Oh No!

Oh no! The Washington Post has discovered a scandal…the Vice-President of the United States works hard, works on goals set for him by the President of the United States, and is intricately involved in the operations of the Bush White House! Liberal Bloggers are already reporting on this made for TV scandal. Do you get my sarcasm? Are you buying this latest, made for the drive-by media scandal? 

The Washington Post has kicked off the latest series of hit pieces on Vice-President Richard Cheney with a highly detailed lead story on Cheney’s management and operational style. NBC and the Washington Post are expressing outrage at the thought of a sitting Vice-President, elected by the voters twice, who is diligently working the levers of the White House to accomplish the goals of the President. This elitist outrage is hilarious as they scramble to make Cheney look bad.

This team of Post reporters should have spent their time exposing the gaping holes in Michael Moore’s latest movie. The reporting would have been more useful to the political debate.

Anyway, here is a brief cutting from the hit piece on Cheney:

In roles that have gone largely undetected, Cheney has served as gatekeeper for Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his native West. On some subjects, officials said, he has displayed a strong pragmatic streak. On others he has served as enforcer of ideological principle, come what may.

Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore. Bush has set his own course, not always in directions Cheney preferred. The president seized the helm when his No. 2 steered toward trouble, as Bush did, in time, on military commissions. Their one-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney’s impact on events. The two men speak of it seldom, if ever, with others. But officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush’s aims.

Waxing or waning, Cheney holds his purchase on an unrivaled portfolio across the executive branch. Bush works most naturally, close observers said, at the level of broad objectives, broadly declared. Cheney, they said, inhabits an operational world in which means are matched with ends and some of the most important choices are made. When particulars rise to presidential notice, Cheney often steers the preparation of options and sits with Bush, in side-by-side wing chairs, as he is briefed.

Before the president casts the only vote that counts, the final words of counsel nearly always come from Cheney.

Read the whole article to get the stupidity of journalists inside the beltway.