Where is Dick?
The mediapolitical complex has been buzzing about the unexplained absence of Vice President Cheney from the Bush administration's belated display of compassion for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Aside from his fleeting appearance last Thursday during a crisis meeting with the President, Cheney has been missing from the Katrina photo ops that have featured President Bush on two camera-ready Katrina pilgrimages, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on one and even - after much-criticized visits to "Spamalot" and Ferragamo - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a drop-by to her native Alabama.
And Cheney? Was he sick? Or maybe at one of his undisclosed locations? Turns out that - until forced on Thursday to cut short his vacation - he'd been in Wyoming, fly-fishing, as the flood waters on the Gulf Coast rose.
Yesterday a wag suggested that Cheney's wife, Lynne - whose children's book, "America: A Patriotic Primer," made liberal use of the alphabet - might be working on a sequel, "A Is for AWOL."
George Washington University Professor Stephen Hess, a scholar of the presidency, said Cheney's remarkable invisibility was the subject of lunchroom chatter yesterday at the Brookings Institution.
"Maybe he's been ducking this one because he wants to keep his shirt clean," Hess speculated.
Democratic talking head Paul Begala said maybe it's smart of Cheney to stay behind the scenes.
"Nobody's going to confuse Dick Cheney with a warm and fuzzy guy," Begala said. "You're not going to send him to be comforter-in-chief. He's the type of guy who would look at them and growl, 'Life's tough. Get back to work.' Plus he's busy ruining Iraq."
Nonsense, the veep's spokesman told me yesterday.
"The vice president returned from Wyoming on Thursday and has been intimately involved in the details of Katrina recovery operations," the flack said. "[Tomorrow] he will visit the region at the request of the President to assess the recovery efforts."