Historians love to start chapters with anecdotes. Find something small, humorous, maybe even seemingly insignificant, and then use it as a metaphor for some larger theme or trend for the era you are about to describe.
When the history of the Bush administration is written, I've long suspected that the anecdote used to introduce Cheney's impact on the nation will be his hunting episode. He meant to hit a flightless bird, but instead he shot a long-time friend in the face.
What's been less clear to me, however, has been the anecdote that will be used as a metaphor for the president himself. Until now.
Relaxing before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the president went fishing with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and daughter, Barbara.They dropped the anchor to fish less than 100 feet from shore at Biddleford, Maine, but when they decided to leave, they couldn't, according to an Associated Press photographer who took pictures of the incident.
A fishing guide along on the trip tried unsuccessfully to pull up the heavy anchor.
Bush yanked hard too, but couldn't dislodge it either.
Soon after, a member of the president's security detail called divers aboard a Secret Service boat that had been following behind.
The anchor was untied, and the elder Bush backed his boat, a blue-and-white craft named Fidelity III, out of the way. After a diver dove down into the chilly water, the president, nonchalantly, resumed fishing.
But he had time to cast his line just a few times. Within minutes, the diver surfaced with the anchor in hand.
Residents and vacationers renting houses along the coast gathered to watch the anchor retrieval mission.
Bush waved his hat at the crowd as his dad began steering the boat back toward the Bush family estate at Walker's Point where Putin was to arrive a few hours later.
The rest just about writes itself.
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