From the chaotic and destructive response to those Danish cartoons, we can glean two powerful insights:  1) Cartoons can sometimes pack a greater wallop than written criticism; 2) It is often more hurtful to be mocked than to be simply criticized. The Islamic rioters realized what most politicians come to know, that few things in life sting more than being broadly lampooned.

It is one of the hazards of political life that the powerful are often undone not by large, spectacular misdeeds, but rather by small, seemingly trivial acts that subject them to ridicule. Such small actions take on a larger-than-life, metaphorical meaning when they happen to correspond to some suspected flaw in the individual’s character. The perceived flaw may be well-known and openly discussed, or it may be some vague unspoken impression that the public has formed about an individual. Once that public intuition has set in, it may take only a small stumble to trigger massive ridicule that leaves a lasting impression.

A perfect example of this is the case of presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. In 1988, Dukakis was running as a can-do guy, a competent technocrat, the author of the “Massachusetts Miracle,” an economic recovery in the state that he had governed. By September of 1988, Dukakis’ image had slipped significantly. He was increasingly seen as a bland, ineffectual figure with questionable leadership skills. Seeking to fix his sinking image, Dukakis traveled to a General Dynamics plant in Michigan, and proceeded to hop into an Abrams MI tank with a combat helmet on. The resulting photo was so unbecoming, so wimpy (some likened him to Snoopy), and so absurd that Dukakis became an instant laughingstock. Unwittingly, he had created his own “living cartoon,” and had confirmed the public’s worst suspicions about him.

Likewise, Dan Quayle ventured into cartoonland in 1992, the day that he traveled to Munoz Rivera School in Trenton, New Jersey, for a photo op at an inner city elementary school. While participating in a student spelling bee, Quayle made the mistake of trusting an erroneous flashcard which had added an “e” to the word potato. After a student had spelled the word properly, Quayle mistakenly interjected that an “e” was missing. Quayle’s gaffe became a world-wide story and a defining moment in his political career. Had the same stumble occurred to a politician who was respected for his intellect, it would have been a one-day story. However, in Quayle’s case it became another “living cartoon” that was so powerful that Quayle felt compelled to devote an entire chapter to it in his autobiography, “Standing Firm.”

The discussion of Quayle—or should I say quail—segues perfectly into the latest episode of a vice-president creating his own cartoon, that of Dick Cheney. As suggested earlier, a misstep only becomes a cartoon only when it serves to highlight some deep public intuition about an individual. The hunting incident in which Cheney shot friend and fellow hunter Harry Whittington exemplifies this dynamic in a much more complex way than the aforementioned examples. This is not simply a case of “this guy is a wimp,” or “this guy is dumb.” Rather, the Cheney shooting incident works on multiple levels and speaks volumes about not only Dick Cheney, but his boss as well. The first theme that emerges from the incident is about truth-telling vs. denial. The NY Times put it best:

“The vice president appears to have behaved like a teenager who thinks that if he keeps quiet about the wreck, no one will notice that the family car is missing its right door.”

The image of Cheney in the aftermath, avoiding meetings with Senate colleagues, slipping out side doors, ducking all press contact, is a horrible reflection on his ability to accept responsibility, to communicate honestly with his constituents, in short to be a stand-up guy. Indeed there still exists a general suspicion that if host Katharine Armstrong had not reported the shooting, Cheney might have attempted to cover it up completely. The Times’ use of the image of a teenager is very apt here; there is something shockingly non-adult about the Cheney response to this mishap. Worse though, it is a perfect analogue to Cheney’s behavior since 9/11.

Throughout the Bush term, Dick Cheney has inhabited an alternate universe, refusing to recognize facts that have long since become clear to the rest of us: Has anyone ever heard Cheney disavow his statement that we would be greeted with flowers in Iraq? Two years into the war he was still trying to defend this statement on Meet the Press. Long after any Saddam-Al Qaeda connection had been debunked, Cheney was still making the rounds spreading the administration fantasy that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi officials in Prague. Cheney never met a fact that he couldn’t twist, ignore, or deny. Has anyone ever heard him acknowledge the folly of his 2005 statement on CNN, “I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." Of course not, because tough guys like Dick Cheney don’t do corrections or apologies..

Another way of putting it is that neither Cheney nor his boss is prone to any reflection, a serious handicap for a leader in a complex world that requires constant adjustments on the fly. The lead-footed response to Katrina, the tendency to pretend that officials who have failed miserably have somehow succeeded (e.g., George Tenet, Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer, Michael Brown), the history of bad judgment compounded by excessive secrecy, the lack of any sense of obligation to communicate to the public—all of these things are illuminated by Cheney’s post-shooting behavior.

So far, however, these flaws of Dick Cheney seem more tragic than comic. The cartoonish aspect of the incident comes from two additional features: First there is the obvious “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” metaphor. The fact that Cheney, the grim, devoted, anti-terrorist, can’t even shoot at a covey of quail without endangering those around him is painfully funny to those of us who feel like we’ve been taking birdshot from this guy for six years.

But the second and most hilarious aspect of the incident was Cheney’s explanation for his behavior: He was just too sensitive a guy to face the public right away. That’s right, Cheney is actually offering an Oprah defense to explain his inappropriate behavior: He was too emotional, too upset to do the right thing; at core, he’s just too sensitive a guy. The interesting thing about Cheney’s self-defense is that, in my view, he’s partly telling the truth! I believe that after the shooting, Cheney was embarrassed, ashamed, mortified, and wanted to find a hole to crawl into. Who wouldn't be? The problem is, when a public official who is “adult” feels this way, he stands up and faces the music, as John Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, looked for a hole, and then crawled into it, revealing himself to be what was long suspected, one of the many warrior-wimps in this administration. Cheney, like so many neo-cons, is the guy who got five draft deferments to avoid the military, but insists that everyone else go fight. If he is incapable of facing the public after this blunder, what level of honesty can we expect from him concerning a real war where 2,500 men and women have been killed and where 17,000 have been maimed?

Dick Cheney’s presentation of himself as a tough guy, a no-nonsense leader who knows realpolitik, has given way to that of an adolescent who runs away after hitting the baseball through the picture window. It is the fraudulence of Cheney’s image that is so painfully funny, that created such a classic and instant lampoon.

Finally, as I watched Cheney flounder through this episode, he kept reminding me of someone. Finally I figured out who it was: His fellow Wyomingers, the cowboys from Brokeback Mountain! Those two fellows were Cheney prototypes: Terse, tough, competent on the outside, chaotic, troubled, and confused on the inside. The difference is, those two guys had the whole weight of  society against them. What’s Cheney’s excuse?