More than ‘a picture in a photo line’

January 23, 2006

Scott McClellan, when answering questions about Jack Abramoff’s White House access, has been unusually evasive and non-committal for weeks, but today he got careless. McClellan routinely slices the truth pretty thin, but in response to questions about Bush-Abramoff pictures, McClellan either didn’t know what he was talking about or he was intentionally deceiving reporters.

At this morning’s press gaggle, a reporter noted that McClellan encouraged the press corps to get back to him if they had “something specific.” The pictures, in the reporters’ minds, qualify as something specific. It didn’t matter; McClellan still dodged.

“I indicated to you exactly what I just told you. I indicated to you that there were a few staff-level meetings that he attended at least — he attended two holiday receptions, in 2001 and 2002. There are some 400 to 500 people at each of those gatherings. And of course there’s a photo line at those holiday receptions. The President has participated in tens upon thousands of photo lines or pictures in photo lines over the course of the last five years. He’s taken pictures with many of you. […]

“Trying to say there’s more to it than the President taking a picture in a photo line is just absurd.”

Actually, it’s not absurd at all. Journalists for Time, who’ve seen the pictures, reported that one of the several Bush-Abramoff shots also featured Raul Garza Sr., an Abramoff client who was then chairman of the Kickapoo Indians, which owned a casino in southern Texas.

We’re still waiting for details, but it’s worth noting that Bush met with the Kickapoo Indians in May 2001, thanks to the lobbying efforts of Abramoff and Grover Norquist. Indeed, at this gathering, the president met with Garza and Abramoff — though the White House now insists that Abramoff wasn’t at the meeting. (Everyone in attendance seems to say otherwise.) It’s likely where the Bush/Abramoff/Garza picture was taken.

This wasn’t just “a picture in a photo line” or a shot at a Hanukah party.

I still can’t quite figure out why the Bush gang is screwing this up so badly; their political instincts usually aren’t this bad. Their dissembling only makes it seem like the White House has something very embarrassing to hide, which only makes reporters more intrigued.

And for those keeping score at home, we’re up to 19 days since McClellan promised the press corps a “thorough report” on Jack Abramoff’s White House contacts “very soon.”

I find it impossible to believe there aren’t hundreds of photos of Bush snuggling up to one of his biggest contributers, both at the White House and at the so-called ranch in Texas.

They’re lying, but then that’s all they’ve done for five years – beyond committing other high crimes and misdemeanors.

  • I think their political instincts are as good as ever in fighting specific fires, like even in this situation.

    That is, what else can they do but lie? What would happen to them if they told the truth? Probably instant catastrophe. If they lie, they can at least delay things long enough for other events to render interest in the topic moot, or else have their surrogates in their tame media diffuse the situation. Lying is to their advantage, truth is to their detriment. They may be in an awkward situation with their lies seemingly pathetic, but they can do nothing else and, moreover, the lies are effective in terms of stalling for time.

    The strategy for the opposition needs to be to force events. Bush is mortgaging time against impact. The lies are adding up, but to bring it all down on Bush’s head the opposition must somehow force matters. Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation is one such method, although Dems don’t control that.

  • Sorry, but all I’m getting out of this story are
    photo-ops. Thousands of pictures are taken
    every year in this context, and I don’t see anything
    incriminating about this.

    Have we been reduced to this?

    This president has committed the most heinous
    crime in American history, invading, destroying
    a sovereign nation, killing somewhere from 30,000
    to 100,000 innocent human beings for no reason
    whatsoever, and the best we can do is indict
    the guy for a few poses with Abramoff?

    Has eveyone gone mad in this country?

    This man, this administration is monstrous. And we
    go after him/it for a parking ticket?

  • It may just be a “parking ticket,” but who the hell knows which barb might actually wound this monster and begin to bring it down? BushCo is relentless in its lying and spinning, and I think those who oppose him must be no less relentless in seeking to call out the lying and spinning. The more evidence that the Abramoff mess is the result of the Republicans’ one party rule (a mess, BTW, that Dubya both abetted and benefitted from), the better the chance that some gains will be made in the mid-terms.

    I will grant that Iraq is the 800 lb gorilla in the zoo of Dubya F-up’s. I thought Abu Ghraib would snap the believers in my life to attention and change their minds. I was wrong. I simply got shouted down when I said I was outraged by what was being done in my name. Deaths, insider admissions of incompetence, and increasing acknowledgements that the insurgency is, in fact, a civil war have yet to move the center firmly away from Bush. He has been quite successful in wrapping his sorry ass in the glory of the troops that he sent to do the job in Iraq.
    His incredibly bad performance (and the continuing lack of meaningful reconstruction plans) regarding Katrina should have further pummelled him into oblivion. Not yet. He has taken a “Can Do” nation and converted it into a frightened shell of itself. A shell that is willing to accept “decisive” incompetence instead of acting to choose a different path. A frightened shell that has so dialed down its notion of real leadership that this boob of a president isn’t met with unremitting derision every day from every quarter. A frightened shell that does not bop itself hard in the forehead every morning and say, “My God! My President is basically shredding the Constitution he swore to uphold and telling Congress that he damn well will decide when he can torture prisioners – despite the overwhelming vote of the representatives of popular will to the contrary!” This shell would rather put a war and the NOLA’s reconstruction on a credit card from China and let the grand kids worry about it. Bush has diminished this country in so many ways, I will cry if I don’t stop my rant now.
    So, I say, “No arrows left in the quiver. Fire anything and everything we’ve got at this abysmal jerk.” Capone went to jail for tax evasion. Heaven knows that was not at the top of the list of items for which he deserved to be punished.

  • Not to mention that Abramoff was on the Bush transition team, heaing up the Dept. of the Interior, where all the Indians are. EVERYONE seems to forget that fact. Jack was there because he was Part of the Bush team, and paid handsomently as a Pioneer to do so. The MSM just missed the boat on that score. Cheers, VJ, ga.

  • Since no one here has been “irresponsible” enough yet to bring this up, I might as well don the tinfoil and do so.

    Apparently (and there’s AP and WaPo articles out there to back it up) Mohammed Atta and several of his *ahem* associates were on a Sun Cruz gambling-boat trip the first week of September 2001.

    Sun Cruz … Kidan … Boulis … Abramoff … 9/11 … fundraising … unregulated gambling … cash transactions …

    Just sayin’.

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