Good news from Corpus Christi, Texas. Harry Whittington is mending so nicely at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial that he’s been joking about getting shot by Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday.

If the victim can have fun with the situation, it shouldn’t be insensitive to compare Monday’s White House press briefing to a shooting gallery where presidential press secretary Scott McClellan was a sitting duck. McClellan’s unenviable responsibility was to make the absurd sound plausible to an incredulous press corps. He failed.

Reporter after reporter asked McClellan to explain why, when the vice president of the United States had shot a companion in a hunting accident, the appropriate way to get the word out was to rely on the property owner to call a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times — a day later.

The incident reportedly happened about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, and Secret Service personnel traveling with Cheney are said to have notified the local sheriff’s office about an hour later. (A deputy who showed up to talk to the vice president that evening was turned away, however, and it was Sunday morning before authorities could have their interview.)

Although details were filtering back to the capital through the night, nobody put out a news release or called a press conference. On Sunday morning, Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where Cheney and Whittington were shooting quail, possibly without all the required stamps, told Cheney she intended to notify the local paper. Cheney, who has a press office at his disposal, acquiesced.

The Caller-Times posted its scoop on the Web, and that afternoon, after the Sunday television political talk shows were over, the White House confirmed the shooting incident.

What did the president know and when did he know it? What did McClellan himself know and when did he know it? Why didn’t they just put the details out as they became known? The basics, after all, were simple: Hunter down. Not fatal. Vice president pulled the trigger. Stay tuned.

On Monday, one sympathetic cable TV commentator tabulated the hostile fire McClellan had to face that morning. Sixty-five questions dealt with the hunting incident. The commentator didn’t say how many answers McClellan gave, but for the record there were two, though he gave them over and over:

“”Ask the vice president’s office.”

“”Information continued to come in during the night.”

Had McClellan been more informative, reporters wouldn’t have had to ask 65 times why the news wasn’t released in a forthright way. For that matter, if the vice president’s staff had announced the incident promptly and frankly, McClellan would have been spared Monday’s ordeal.

Cheney, meanwhile, rather than face the press and answer their questions frankly, spent Monday morning avoiding appearances that might have headed off the kind of suspicion that a weekend of evasion is likely to fan.