In the Imperial Vice Presidency : Since Cheney doesn't have a real chance of moving up, he felt he could change the rules, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter proves that it's much easier hunting Quayle, as in Dan, than the formidable presence of Dick Cheney. Alter misses the mark, actually several of them.
Cheney has changed the rules, he isn't feeling that he can and obviously the MSM doesn't like it, witness their combination punches.
Fox News's exclusive interview with Vice President Dick Cheney was, as CNN's Jack Cafferty sniped, "like Bonnie interviewing Clyde," but Brit Hume posed some good questions.
Naturally, Alter would play down any criticism of Hume, which he should. But then the old boys club of journalism doesn't play that way, at least not well. But he tries not to spare Cheney.
Cheney believes in what might be called partisan accountability—you answer only to your own side, on your own terms, not to the jackals of the mainstream media.
Nonsense, Cheney answered the media and the country the morning after the incident. Unlike the average American, Alter simply doesn't like the avenue chosen. Alter guides us up through Hoover to Roosevelt to suggest that began the modern era of press conferences which transformed the idea of accountability in Washington. Oh, really?
The fact is Roosevelt played the press far better than it ever held him accountable, which Alter still can't seem to do by foolishly using the word imperial in an article invoking the image of Roosevelt, while failing to mention his court packing and internment policies. Obviously said press conferences did nothing to check Roosevelt's genuinely imperialistic Presidency, which makes Cheney look like a lightweight.
So Cheney has quietly figured out how to avoid answering the messy questions that are a vital part of a modern democracy.
Yes, America will hardly survive if we don't soon find out which brand of shot shell Cheney was using that day. We can hardly wait. But here's the crux of Alter's concern:
By not holding a press conference since 2002, Cheney is telling the men and women assigned to cover the White House that they are irrelevant.
And this silliness is hardly worth addressing:
perhaps we are witnessing a variation on the "K Street Project," where congressional Republican leaders would deal only with lobbyists loyal to the GOP. We'll see how Sean Hannity likes it when a future Democratic president or vice president gives interviews only to NPR and The Nation.
Congratulations, Jonathan, you managed to get the words lobbyist and Republican in the same sentence. Looks like all those years in J school have paid off. Did you at least do some research to see how many Dems won't appear on a Hannity, or Limbaugh show now? Clearly not, as the more vocal Dems seem to avoid those and other more substantive conservative forums such as Hugh Hewitt's like the plague.
The media often focus on relatively unimportant, easy-to-understand stories as metaphors for shortcomings
I disagree. I think the media often focuses on shortcomings they perceive, not necessarily ones which exist, or which might concern a large number of Americans. That totally contradicts Alter's and other pundit's assumptions that they are proxies for America at large.
What they hope to be is constructors of the image they think America should see, not simply communicators of the reality or truth. Due to alternative media, that issue has finally caught up with the MSM. Consequently, they are increasingly just as irrelevant as the current Vice President is making them feel.
And that, and little else, is the real reason behind the hunting non-scandal coverage.
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