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AAccidents do happen, but rarely do accidents end with the victim apologizing to the person who committed the offending act, even unknowingly.
But such was the case in 2006, when Dick Cheney, current Vice President of the United StatesWhile accompanied by members of the Secret Service, he accidentally fired a shotgun at the face and torso of an acquaintance: Harry Whittington, then a prominent attorney in Austin, Texas, who was quail hunting with Veep. What happened next has passed some time as a strange news cycle — a far cry from any of the scandals of the Trump era, but a punctuated moment of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Cheeni, Whose death was announced on Tuesday And then he was around 60 years old, One of the most influential Vice Presidents of the modern era. His immense influence over his boss, known colloquially as “Dubya”, was the subject of a 2018 biographical satire vice, An analysis of Cheney’s rise to political power. Adam McKay The film depicts a cool, calculating manipulator who plays the President From behind the scenes.
The truth is that there were very few fraught relationships between men, but cheeni His image as the architect of some of America’s biggest foreign policy blunders never escaped, including the invasions of what is now both Afghanistan and Iraq as Iraq fell back into the hands of the Taliban and was ravaged by violence by the Islamic State and its allies for a decade after the invasion.
And the statement read by Whittington as she left the hospital a week later was revealing of the kind of politician Cheney had become at that time and the kind of influence she had wielded within the GOP.
Whittington, who was hit by shotgun pellets in the face, neck and chest, later told reporters that he was incredibly sorry for not being informed about his condition sooner, while he then took a surprise step: he apologized to Cheney and the vice president’s family over media coverage of the shooting.
“My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney had to endure last week. We give her our love and respect as she deals with situations that are far more serious than what she faced this week,” said the man who was shot in the face.
Then, in an even more impressive move, he added: “And we hope he continues to come to Texas and seek the waiver he deserves.”
Talk about impact! Some people might say that after seriously injuring someone, their victim spent a long time ranting about how overworked and important they were. But it reflects Cheney’s influence within the GOP, especially in Texas, where the Bush family also remains one of the most powerful and politically connected clans in the Trump era.
Just to be clear, there was no personal understanding between the men. This was not an act of friendship. Whittington, who died in 2023 at age 95, later declined to answer and became tense when The Washington Post asked him if Cheney ever apologized five years later. It was clear that an apology was expected but it never materialized.
The publication’s Paul Farhi reported at the time, “Harry Whittington is very kind to say it out loud, but he doesn’t even dispute the notion.”
However, he reluctantly told the outlet that his injuries were more serious than he had publicly stated, revealing that he had suffered a mild heart attack after some of the bird shot reached his heart.
At the time of the hunting accident, the White House came under criticism, which it rejected. Democrats suggested that the delay in disclosing the firing was a sign of the administration’s hostility toward public scrutiny. a republican senator Vice President punished For showing poor gun safety skills.
But in a truly Trumpian drama — before death was even a word — George W. Bush declared that Cheney’s explanation was “strong and powerful”.
“Yesterday when he was here in the Oval Office, I saw his deep concern for the man he injured,” Bush said of the man Cheney killed before apologizing.
It was only with the rise of Trump that Cheney and Bush saw their influence diminish over both politicians and broader social sectors of wealthy conservatives across the country. The damage caused by Trump’s dismantling of Bush and Cheney’s records in 2015 and 2016 never really went away, and the party’s quick transition from Bush-era neoconservatives to Trump-era paleo-conservatives and isolationists was helped by the relative silence of both men following their departures from the White House.
Cheney made her last foray into politics last year, joining her daughter, Liz Cheney — the former Wyoming congresswoman who left office in protest over Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol — in an effort to propel Kamala Harris to victory. It didn’t work, and Democratic voters seemed less thrilled by the prospect of their party building a new home for Republicans expelled by their own tribe.
In many ways, the incident with the former Vice President shooting an acquaintance most reflects the bubble that surrounds the American political class at all times, which seems to shield them from accountability, consequences, or criticism. Trump railed against the same system as soon as he came to power, only to restructure it around himself and his close allies.
Dubya, whose drunken-driving arrest years ago was first made public just days before the presidential election, was happy to shield his running mate from criticism. So was Whittington, a longtime supporter of the state Republican Party, who apparently had no interest in challenging that movement’s two scions.
Ultimately, the incident was a preview of the consequence-free world of the modern Republican Party, where disloyalty is the only sin and ungrateful response to one’s own shortcomings is merely a speed bump.