An Instinct for the Capillary

"Vice-president has hunting accident." Not long ago, that would have been a page-seven story, at best. But this time it was the top story of the week in America. Not only did it get the kind of attention from cable news channels that is normally reserved for teenaged white girls gone missing, it got daily above-the-fold treatment in even the stodgiest of Old Media.

Part of the reason is because the story combined themes the news media love: the dangers of firearms and the untrustworthiness of Dick Cheney. It seemed a golden opportunity to indulge in a lengthy exposition of both but, at the end of the week, it seemed as if Dick Cheney was the winner. That should not be surprising, given that the Cheney shooting incident was merely the latest in a long string of episodes demonstrating the tendency of the administration’s opponents, and the press, to strike at the capillary rather than the jugular.

In fact, the Bush administration is vulnerable on a number of fronts. Its response to the "cartoon jihad" by Islamic extremists has been limp. There seems no clear plan, beyond allowing the obviously ineffective diplomacy of the EU to continue, for dealing with Iran. US domestic spending is out of control, and an anti-pork-barrel movement among conservatives and libertarians (of which I am part) is targeting Republican congressmen as well as Democrats, not surprising given that Republicans are in control of Congress, and chafing at the White House’s lack of support for spending limits.

These issues got little attention, though, as the Cheney hunting story was pushed so hard there would be hardly any media oxygen left for other stories - only for it to collapse when the shooting victim, a lawyer called Harry Whittington, emerged looking healthy and saying that accidents happen

As Daniel Henninger noted in the Wall Street Journal, it was a pattern we had seen before. "Have you ever noticed how," Henninger wrote, "on a scale of one to 10, every untoward event in the life of the Bush presidency goes straight to a 10?

"The Abu Ghraib photos? A 10 forever. Dick Cheney catching a hunting buddy with some birdshot? An instant 10. The Bush national guard story? Total 10. How can it be that each downside event in this presidency greets the public at this one, screeching level of outrage and denunciation by the out-of-power party and a perpetually outraged media?

"There was a time when what has been called news judgment would deem some stories a five or six and run them on page 14 or deeper in the newscast ... Not with this presidency. Every downside event - large, small and in-between - plays on the front page above the fold now. And when Dick Cheney accidentally pops Harry Whittington, old Harry Reid jumps up from his Senate leader’s desk faster than a Nevada jack rabbit to announce, one more time, that this ‘is part of the secretive nature of this administration’.

"Here are some of the political and media bonfires that have been lit on the White House lawn, stoked and reignited over the past five years: the ‘stolen’ 2000 election, Halliburton, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, Cheney lives in an ‘undisclosed location’, Abu Ghraib, torture at Guantánamo Bay, Bush lied about WMD, secret CIA prison sites, Valerie Plame, the neocons ... Cheney’s ‘secret’ energy task force, Cindy Sheehan, Bush is destroying social security, Hurricane Katrina, Jack Abramoff, illegal wiretaps, Bill Frist’s stock sales, what else?"

With a nod to the movie Spinal Tap, I would say the media treatment of Bush administration scandals "goes to 11". This lack of proportion reflects poorly on the press and on Bush’s opponents (categories that often seem indistinct these days) but in some ways it actually benefits Bush and the Republicans. First, the tendency of the press and opposition to seize on stories that reflect their own prejudices, rather than their newsworthiness, means stories that might actually harm the GOP get ignored in the rush to pick up on those that symbolize why they dislike the administration.

Second, the constant screeching Henninger points to causes people to tune out. Continuing the Spinal Tap analogy, as a sometime record producer myself I have learned the importance of volume control. Modern technology lets you use various tools (such as audio compression and gain compensation) to make sure every song on an album sounds absolutely as loud as possible. Do that, however, and you get an album that catches your ear for the first five minutes and then becomes unbearable to listen to. The human ear dislikes sustained loudness, without variety; you need a sense of proportion even in music - such as the techno I produce - that is basically loud by nature.

Likewise, emailers and internet posters who TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS ALL THE TIME fail to get their message across with as much effect as they would like. To them, the unending capitalization is evidence of how dreadfully important everything they write is. To the rest of us, it betrays a lack of proportion and, quite possibly, the presence of an outright crank. People in the press who show the same lack of judgment should not be surprised if they begin to be perceived in the same way.

So, who wins? Well, the week has been a rough one for Mr. Cheney, no doubt. But as the blogger Tim Cavanaugh notes, the smart money is taking his side: "After a weeklong bump into the double digits, the Dick Cheney June 30 retirement futures at intrade.com have plummeted; they are now below where they were before the shooting."

If Bush’s opponents had a sense of proportion and a measure of self-discipline, he would be in trouble. Luckily for him, they don’t.

• Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, runs the instapundit US political blog