White House: Aw Shucks

Frank Rich’s point yesterday was that Obama — by being overly deferential to industry and the status quo — is merely working the edges of the oil catastrophe.

Many of the news photos from Friday seem to back that up. This AP shot, for example, is representative of several close-ups of Obama’s third visit to the oil-stricken Gulf. The context (more pics) is an informal lunch with residents at a bait shop and boiled seafood restaurant in Grand Isle, La.

The unflattering photo takes aim at the President’s gesture of solidarity with the locals. Using the look of the convenience store owner as a non-verbal editorial, the message is that the President — partaking of the spoils of the Gulf in the name of focusing on the spoilage — is going through the motions, there to indulge his own PR needs more than to serve the situation.