This is one of those “take a deep breath” moments in politics. It turns out Dick Cheney’s accidental shooting of a hunting partner has been much ado about nothing – and everything.

Cheney made a human mistake. It was magnified beyond human proportion by the position he holds and the reputation he has honed as a secretive and powerful partner to the president of the United States.

The vice president certainly could have been more forthcoming in offering his regrets and apologies for accidentally shooting friend and prominent Texas Republican Harry Whittington on a Feb. 11 quail hunt. Four days later, Cheney finally went public with a mea culpa on Bush-friendly Fox News. Here are three lessons to ponder from the strange ordeal:

“Cheney’s biggest mistake may have been one that leaders often make: thinking Americans automatically equate mistakes, even the most basic human failures, with weakness.

Quickly admitting you’ve made a mistake, even an egregious one, can be a strong leadership attribute. But in a Bush administration battered by rising concerns that it began a war in Iraq based on faulty evidence, any hint of a new mistake provokes a knee-jerk defensiveness that isn’t healthy in a democracy.

The vice president said he chose to withhold information about the shooting to make sure the accurate story got out and to prevent the victim’s family from hearing the news from TV talking heads. Those are legitimate concerns and in talking about them with Fox, Cheney appeared genuine and human.

For a man who can come across as a scolding uncle, it was a rare glimpse of another side. And since this did not involve national security or the loss of life, most Americans are not going to get worked up over whether they knew about this accident Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. More moments like these might actually help the administration rally support for what Bush has said will be a long and tough struggle against terrorism.

“Cheney’s actions also added significant heft to an unflattering narrative about his leadership.

From formation of a secretive energy task force to his role in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, Cheney has been one of the most powerful and secretive vice presidents in American history. The shooting accident – and more importantly, Cheney’s attempts to manage how the news got played – wraps a fresh metaphorical bow around this story line.

“ History’s ultimate verdict on a presidency depends much more on how a president overcomes mistakes than on how he attempts to shape them for public consumption.

The truth is what it is. In a more extreme example, Bill Clinton’s year of denial about Monica Lewinsky in 1998 cost him immensely. Clinton could have taken consequential action to address major problems like Social Security reform. But instead, he spent much of the rest of his presidency backpedaling into history.

Eleven months before Pearl Harbor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his famous “four freedoms” speech, declaring that in the darkness ahead, the United States would stand for freedom of speech and religion and for freedom from want and fear. Bush has made similar declarations in the global struggle against a new, deadly form of fundamentalism.

History granted FDR a favorable verdict for holding steady in leadership, even when his own health was failing him. Yet along the way, Roosevelt made large mistakes, including the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans in dreary camps. Imagine the civil liberties debates if FDR faced the Internet, TV talking heads and the perpetual campaign culture of the Bush-Cheney era.

In the end, FDR’s steadiness and perseverance largely overshadowed his mistakes in history’s broader sweep. So perhaps it’s time for a collective breath. Accidents happen even to the best of us.