POLS & PICTURES
NEW YORK POST
Editorial
January 24, 2006
Democratic hearts went all a-twitter yesterday after Time magazine breathlessly disclosed that its reporters have seen five photographs in which both President Bush and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff appear.
This, suggests Time, may cause real problems for the White House, which has steadfastly insisted that the president "does not know" Abramoff, "nor does the president recall ever meeting him."
Indeed, says Time, the real "fear" of the Bush team is that "a picture of the president with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal."
Well, maybe.
But much more likely not.
For one thing, as Time itself reports, the pictures all appear to have been taken at formal presidential receptions and are the kind of rapid-fire photos, later signed by an autopen device, that the president takes with all kinds of supporters.
Indeed, during his presidency, Bush has posed for tens of thousands of such photos — most of them with people he doesn't know.
But as smoking guns go, surely these photos are far less incriminating than, say, the one taken at a White House Christmas party in which then-First Lady Hillary Clinton posed with Jorge Cabrera — just three weeks before he was arrested and charged with smuggling 6,000 pounds of cocaine.
He later pled guilty, amid reports that his $20,000 check to the Democratic National Committee came from an account replenished with cash from coke sales.
For that matter, back in the '70s, then-First Lady Rosalynn Carter posed one-on-one with a Chicago Democratic precinct captain named John Wayne Gacy. Moreover, the photo was personally inscribed: "To John Gacy, Best Wishes — Rosalynn Carter."
Who knew that several months later, Gacy would be charged (and later executed) as one of the most notorious mass murderers in American history?
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not always. Not in this case.
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