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Look for the nickname! If Bush bestowed one of his puerile nicknames on Abramoff, the White House is lying. If not, then maybe, strange as it sounds, they're telling the truth.
I'm sure you could find five pictures of Bush with a lot of people. In fact, placing too much importance on scraps like those in the Time article might even provide the White House with a hand to play. It's the kind of "evidence" that allows Rove et al to set up straw men (witness how one wrong detail of the CBS piece on Bush's otherwise well-documented National Guard scam killed the entire story).
I can imagine Fox News running 5 pictures of Bush with Gore, ad nauseum, as proof the Abramoff pics don't matter. Though nonsensical, it will work. Time will then feel pressure to show "balance" and run pictures of Abramoff with Democratic staff, thus clouding the picture for the uninformed.
Progressives would do well to point out the bigger picture: legislation written by lobbyists - on which no member of Congress campaigned and for which the public never asked - gets passed routinely. Meanwhile, issues the public cares about deeply, and on which every politician campaigns, consistently go unaddressed (e.g. education, healthcare costs, access to healthcare, pension reform, etc.).
