WASHINGTON, May 8: Was it a slip of the tongue, a backhanded payback for callous jokes about him, or a sign of a deeper chill in relations between two most powerful men in the United States? The White House would not give an explanation. But in remarks made on Sunday, Vice-President Dick Cheney appeared to question the political clout of his boss, President George Bush.
During an interview with NBC News, Mr Cheney was asked to comment on persistent rumours that he may retire following the November congressional election, allowing the president to appoint his heir apparent.
The reshuffle, privately advocated by some Republican strategists, would aim to give a younger party hopeful the benefit of presidential coattails ahead of the 2008 election campaign.
But the vice president was sceptical.
“Well, I’m not sure it would be an advantage,” he said with a coy smile. He did not elaborate. A White House official declined to explain what Mr Cheney meant.
It is no secret, however, that with the presidential job approval rating hitting a new low of 32-33 percent, some Republicans facing tough congressional races are trying to distance themselves from Bush, seeing in him a political liability rather than an asset.
Publicly, the president and the vice president have always professed loyalty to each other and a good working relationship.
But the lion’s share of jokes delivered by the president at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner a week ago happened to target Mr Cheney, and some of them could be hardly called light-hearted.
Mr Bush laughed that he had first learned about Mr Cheney’s hunting incident last February, in which the vice-president accidentally shot and wounded a companion, from ‘America’s Most Wanted’, a television programmeme.
Then actor Steve Bridges, who played in the White House-sanctioned spoof the president’s inner voice, called the vice president a “goofball” and said that during his Texas hunting trip, Cheney was “drunk as a skunk.”
The president segued by making fun of the health condition of the older man, who has had four heart attacks and wears a permanently implanted cardiac defibrillator.
“Dick’s a good man,” Bush said, “He has a good heart...”
Stopping in mid-syllable as if to correct himself, the president rephrased the sentence to laughs and applause from the audience: “Well, he is a good man.” —AFP
