Precious bodily fluids

I've had Dick Cheney (who, may I remind you, not so long ago was shooting people in the face) pegged as an antiseptically paranoid control-freak for quite some time, picturing his remodeled Naval Observatory digs done up in stark white, with visitors required to undergo extensive decontamination upon entering, and for godsakes remove your shoes!

The NYT isn't dispelling that particular notion:

Like so many other people involved in politics these days, Mrs. Ryun has become obsessive about using hand sanitizer and ensuring that others do, too. She squirted Purell, the antiseptic goop of choice on the stump and self-proclaimed killer of “99.99 percent of most common germs that may cause illness,” on people lined up to meet Vice President Dick Cheney this month at a fund-raiser in Topeka.

When Mr. Cheney was done meeting and greeting, he, too, rubbed his hands vigorously with the stuff, dispensed in dollops by an aide when the vice president was out of public view.

In fact, the use of hand sanitizers by the Bush administration and those who must deal with it seems downright cult-like:

“Good stuff, keeps you from getting colds,” Mr. Bush raved about hand sanitizer to Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, at a White House encounter early last year.

Mr. Obama, who recounts the episode in his new book, says that after rubbing a blob of it on his own hands, the president offered him some, which he accepted (“not wanting to appear unhygienic.”)

Mr. Obama has since started carrying Purell in his traveling bag, a spokesman said.

Say it ain't so, Barack! Say it ain't so!

And who, you ask, in a hail of awkward puns, will champion the unwashed masses?:

[Governor Bill] Richardson [D-NM] said that if he ran for president, as he is considering, he had no intention of conforming to the norms of his antiseptic peers.

“I just won’t use the sanitizer,” he said. “I’ve been offered it, but I’ve turned it down.”

This positions Mr. Richardson as the early hygienic maverick of 2008.

“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty,” he said.