Meet Harry Whittington by Molly Ivins

Meet Harry Whittington
A hunting accident is a good chance to pay tribute to a thoroughly decent man

Molly Ivins, Copyright by the Creators Syndicate
Published February 16, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas -- Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas--What's the fine for shooting a lawyer?--and so forth. Dick-Cheney shooting Harry Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got.

Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal--only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants."

In the day, whenever there was an especially bad case of new-ignoramus-in-the-legislature--a "lock 'em all up and throw away the key" type--the senior members used to send the prison-happy, tuff-on-crime neophyte to see Whittington, a Republican after all, for a little basic education on the cost of prisons. When Whittington was chairman of the Texas Public Finance Authority, he had a devastating set of numbers on the demand for more, more, more prison beds. As Whittington was wont to point out, the only thing prisons are good for is segregating violent people from the rest of society, and most of them belong in psychiatric hospitals to begin with. The severity of sentences has no effect on crime.

Texas still keeps the non-violent, the mentally disabled, senior citizens, etc., locked up for ridiculous periods--all at taxpayer expense. I am not trying to make a big deal out of a simple hunting accident for partisan purposes; just thought it was a good chance to pay tribute to old Harry, a thoroughly decent man.

One of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration is that it claims to be creating "the responsibility society." It's hard to think of a crowd less likely to take responsibility for anything they have done or not done than this bunch. They're certainly good at preaching responsibility to others--and blaming other people for everything that goes wrong on their watch.

Of course the Cheney shooting was an accident.

But is it an accident if your home and your life are destroyed by the flood following a hurricane? Especially if the flood was caused by failed levees, a government responsibility?

Is it an accident if you are born with a clubfoot and your parents are too poor to pay for the operation to fix it? Is there any societal responsibility in such a case?

Is it an accident when your manufacturing job gets shipped overseas and all you can find to replace it is a low-wage job at the big-box store with no health insurance, and your kid breaks his leg, and you can't pay the bill, so you have to declare bankruptcy under a new law that leaves you broke for good, with no chance of ever getting out of debt? Or was all of that caused by deliberate government policy?

Cheney is much given to lecturing us about taking responsibility. When and where does societal responsibility come in?

Cheney has a curious, shifting history on issues of blame and responsibility. He was vice chairman of the congressional committee that spent 11 months investigating the Iran-Contra affair and author of its minority report.

As John W. Dean highlights in a recent essay, the 500-page majority report concluded the entire affair "was characterized by pervasive dishonesty and inordinate secrecy." But Cheney's report said the Reagan administration's repeated breaking of the law were "mistakes ... were just that--mistakes in judgment and nothing more."

Those of you who saw Cheney's recent interview with TV host Jim Lehrer may recall the passage on Darfur that ended with this:

Lehrer: "It's still happening. There are now 2 million people homeless."

Cheney: "Still happening, correct."

Lehrer: "Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and--so you're satisfied the U.S. is doing everything it can do?"

Cheney: "I am satisfied we're doing everything we can do."

His head still tilts over more to the right when he lies.