MoDo mercilessly zeros in on Cheney's demeanor in this piece using the pheasant slaughter metaphor:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/opinion/08DOWD.html?th=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1076241893-U16cXz6lPothUgPpm40pJwNow, with the White House looking untrustworthy and desperate; with the national security team flapping around and pointing fingers at each other and, of course, Bill Clinton; with even the placid Laura getting testy; and with Newsweek reporting that the Justice Department is reviewing whether Halliburton was involved in paying $180 million in kickbacks to get contracts in Nigeria at a time when Dick Cheney was chairman, anybody else would be sweating.
Not deadeye Dick. His heavy lids didn't blink when it turned out he'd blown up a half-century of American foreign policy alliances on a high-level hallucination.
<snip>
"Rove needs to toughen up. Why fret over some J.F.K. wannabe who thinks he's going to sail to the White House on a sea of ketchup? Sure, he'll say you brainwashed Junior, exploded the deficit, let Halliburton fleece the government, let big business write environmental policy, turned the White House into a secret society, rewarded your rich friends and went to war on a wild surmise. But, golly, so what?"
"Yeah," Dick agreed. "This is our due." BLAM!