I was going to write this as a comment to a post Adam made, but when I reached my third paragraph, I decided I should blog it instead.
Adam notes an NPR story this afternoon …
“Vice President Cheney has been moved to an undisclosed secure location. Meanwhile, tonight the President will be attending Game 3 of the World Series.”
… and rhetorically asks, “What’s Wrong With This Picture?”
To which I say:
Actually it makes sense. And not just in a Macchiavellian “Well, you always knew that Cheney was the important one in the Administration, didn’t you?” sort of way.
We have people lobbing passenger jets at us. It’s altogether possible that, knowing where both Bush and Cheney are (even at separate locations), a conspiracy could take both of them out. Plus any number of the rest of the line of succession. Chaos ensues.
But the President can’t be the one to hide. That was demonstrated on 9-11, when Bush took incredible flack for not going to Washington ASAP. So he has to retain that air of normalcy, and do things like go to baseball games and hold press conferences.
For Cheney, on the other hand, it’s perfectly reasonable to ferret him away someplace where he can survive another wave of attacks. That only makes sense, actually, regardless of whether he’s the Puppetmaster President or not. Indeed, lacking a department to run, he’s the only one who can be so kept safe without impairing the activities of the Administration.
Yeah, it sounds weird in juxtaposition (and NPR may well have been aware of that). But it does make a sort of Worst Case Scenario sense.