Now look at this, David Ignatius, writing in the Washington Post – a paper characterised by some as the upscale PR office of this American administration (just look at how the arrogance claim comes coupled with “the most righteous politians”) – invokes An Arrogance of Power to explain the Dick Cheney’s silence after the shooting accident.

There is a temptation that seeps into the souls of even the most righteous politicians and leads them to bend the rules, and eventually the truth, to suit the political needs of the moment. That arrogance of power is on display with the Bush administration.

The most vivid example is the long delay in informing the country that Vice President Cheney had accidentally shot a man last Saturday while hunting in Texas. For a White House that informs us about the smallest bumps and scrapes suffered by the president and vice president, the lag is inexplicable. But let us assume the obvious: It was an attempt to delay and perhaps suppress embarrassing news. We will never know whether the vice president’s office would have announced the incident at all if the host of the hunting party, Katharine Armstrong, hadn’t made her own decision Sunday morning to inform her local paper.

Clearly, from a PR standpoint this incident was handles in the worst possible way. But this is not some straw breaking a Cheney’s back, this is a Trent Lott moment. We’ll see soon enough.

Speaking of straws… this might be one (via Brad DeLong).