Charles Krauthammer 
In psychiatry, which Krauthammer claims to have practiced, a view point that detached from reality is known as "delusional."
This news briefing got famously out of control (as a psychiatrist I found the groups I ran for inpatient schizophrenics far more civilized) over the new great issue of our time: Why was there a 14-hour delay in calling the press?Let's pose a hypothetical. You're at a gathering at a friend's house in the country. You're all playing touch football and, as you lunge to tag someone, you stumble and accidentally barrel into a would-be receiver running a crossing pattern and you knock him down, breaking a few of his ribs, maybe puncturing a lung and who knows what else.
What do you do? You get him immediate help. Then you notify and tend to his family. Then you try to calm the host and the guests and to mitigate the damage you've caused.
Now change the hypothetical in just two ways. It's not touch football but a birdshot accident, which makes it a bit more romantic and more comical. But that changes nothing about the correct reaction.
Obviously Krauthammer has neither hunted or fired a weapon if he thinks there is any comparison between getting shot and getting tackled.
And the latest effort from the Bush team is to turn Dick Cheney into a sympathetic figure by playing the blame the media card.
Krauthammer's column is so blatantly straight out of Ken Mehlman's plan (is it proper to use straight and Ken Mehlman in the same sentence?) that I would be surprised if Krauthammer is not on the GOP's payroll just like Armstrong Williams and others have been.
But Krauthammer's spin ignores the reality that it is not just the members of the press corps who smell blood in the water, but pundits on Krauthammer's side of the fence who see Cheney as damaged goods. Even people inside the White House questioned Cheney's handling of the aftermath. Peggy Noonan wrote:
"I suspect what they're thinking and not saying is, If Dick Cheney weren't vice president, who'd be a good vice president? They're thinking, At some time down the road we may wind up thinking about a new plan. And one night over drinks at a barbecue in McLean one top guy will turn to another top guy and say, 'Under the never permeable and never porous Dome of Silence, tell me . . . wouldn't you like to replace Cheney?'
When a Bush stalwart like Noonan floats a trial balloon about finding a replacement for Cheney, no amount of misfire from Krauthammer is going to keep the vice president from dropping like a wounded bird.
KEYWORDS: Dick Cheney
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