handling of the shooting was a moment that some inside the White House would call a turning point, an episode that soured the relationship between president and vice president and diminished Cheney’s clout within the West Wing. “That had a big effect on the Bush staff and his inner circle,” recalled Peter Wehner. Cheney increasingly came to be viewed after the shooting incident less as a sober and intimidating force and more as a political liability. He was even the butt of jokes that would never have been uttered aloud in the corridors of the White House in the first term.
