White House: Fresh Salsa

My dollar bet says that, between now and November, the White House Photo-of-the-Day largely morphs into an archive documenting how Team Obama eeked out a second term by way of the Rovian micro-targeting strategy. It takes more than just DREAM acts and marriage endorsements and endless drone strikes to get there, tough. Bo doesn’t reach middle age in the Rose Garden without tons and tons of photo ops this Summer and Fall with Hispanics, gays and soldiers who vote.

This week, two days apart, Obama did the NALEO “Latino Political Convention” in Florida while Michelle popped in to Nachos in Colorado, on the Southwest restaurant circuit. The salute is about working out the hard lines between belonging here and being “the other,” the resolution being truly patriotic. In the larger battle of the optics, however, one thing you see here, and you’re going to see it a ton, is “campaign differentiation,” showing Romney just how much the campaign and the voters are able to see one another eye-to-eye.

(photo 1: Pete Souza/White House caption: A young boy along the rope line salutes President Barack Obama after the President spoke at the NALEO Conference in Orlando, Fla., June 22, 2012. photo 2: Sonya N. Hebert/White House caption: First Lady Michelle Obama greets patrons before eating lunch at Nacho’s Restaurant in Pueblo, Colo., June 20, 2012.)