President Barack Obama and daughter Sasha swim at Alligator Point in Panama City Beach, Fla., Saturday.
President Barack Obama may have only spent 27-hours on vacation in Florida. But during that short visit with wife Michelle and daughter Sasha, he did everything he could to convey the message that -- as he explained to reporters on Saturday -- despite the BP oil spill, "Beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean, they are safe, and they are open for business."
That's something the region's hard-hit business folk desperately wants the rest of America to hear. Florida alone has lost more than $1.2 billion in vacation-related revenues, as hundreds of thousands of vacationers have stayed away from the disaster zone.
The first family was pictured taking part in a range of quintessential gulf tourist activities, from playing a round of miniature golf, to eating a fish dinner at an outdoor restaurant and enjoying a boat ride in the Atlantic. Most importantly, though, the President took a dip near waters that have swallowed up some 200 million gallons of oil since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April. When he first arrived in Panama City, Fla., the president said that he wouldn't let press photographers snap him in the water. He was worried, he explained, that his naked torso would end up splashed across magazine covers once again. Obama wanted the cleaned-up gulf beaches to be the focus of the media's attention, not his finely honed pecs.
So instead the White House released a photo via its Flickr page that sold the idea of the Gulf Coast as a perfect location for family fun: a shot of the president and his 9-year-old daughter splashing around off Alligator Point, their head and shoulders just visible above the water line. That picture is in stark contrast to the shots of oil-smothered pelicans and tar ball-littered beaches that have dominated media reports on the area for the last four months.
However, there is one slight issue with the location where the president took his dip: Alligator Point is in St. Andrews Bay, not the Gulf of Mexico. The actual gulf was closed to swimming because of riptide, Politico reported. Despite that fact, Obama's decision to dive in has gone down well with the locals. "[That] image does matter to us," Beth Oltman, president of the Panama City Beach Chamber of Commerce, told Fox News shortly before the shot was made public. "We cannot pay for that media attention -- by just having the president of the United States in our gulf will show so many different Americans that our waters are safe to come swim in."
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist also praised the president for his help in promoting the western part of the Florida Panhandle -- which has only seen 16 of its 180 beaches dirtied by the spill. "It's the biggest single commercial that you could imagine," Crist said Saturday. "God bless him for utilizing the bully pulpit that he has to promote tourism in Florida."
