Washington ? Damage-control experts in both political parties agree: The handling of Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap has been a disaster, a case study in how not to handle bad news.

At best, it has fed criticism of Cheney as aloof and isolated. At worst, critics suggest, it has shown a president unable to control his own vice president.

“It’s a self-created nightmare,” said Lanny Davis, a former Clinton White House troubleshooter who now heads a Washington law practice that specializes in legal crisis management. “Cheney took a nonstory, or a minor story, and created a huge negative story because of his stubbornness and his arrogance.”

Under pressure from the White House and outside Republican strategists, Cheney took responsibility in a Fox News Channel interview for the accidental shooting of a 78-year-old quail hunting companion Saturday in Texas. The interview, broadcast Wednesday evening, followed three days of public silence on Cheney’s part.

Although White House aides had earlier conveyed concern about the slowness of Cheney’s response, President Bush on Thursday said the vice president had handled the matter “just fine” and had given a “powerful explanation.”

In Texas, meanwhile, the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Department closed its investigation of the shooting Thursday and said no charges would be filed. It issued a report that supported Cheney’s account of the accident that wounded Austin attorney Harry Whittington.

Some public relations veterans suggested Cheney may need to do more.

Republican consultant Rich Galen, who was a senior adviser to both Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dan Quayle, suggested that Cheney comes from an old school of thought dating to his days in the House in the 1980s “that you don’t respond to an attack from your opponent that raises the level of the discussion.”

“That entire doctrine has come and gone. Now the doctrine is you respond instantaneously, and where possible with a strong counterattack. A lot of that is because of the Internet, a lot of that is because of cable TV news,” Galen said.