Photo courtesy of NPR

Pictures like this one have been surfacing a lot on the internet in the past few days. Oh, and there’s also the suds-soaked news about how for the first time in the history of this country, there is beer being brewed inside the White House.

This isn’t the first time the president’s made the news for his homebrew. At last year’s Super Bowl, he offered the house-brewed beer to his guests at the White House, and also reportedly shared some at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

Now, Obama’s bringing the beer with him on his campaign bus. After visiting a coffeehouse in Iowa, he talked beer with the owner and even left the guy with a bottle of his homebrew, causing the press to go wild.

From what we know, the beer is a honey ale, brewed with honey from the presidential garden’s beehive. That’s pretty cool. Democrat, Republican, Tea Party Activist – I don’t care who you are, beer is its ability to stick a social glue between adversaries. And who even knew there was a presidential beehive?

Let’s be honest though, in an election year, almost anything can be made political. And beer is perceived as an "every man’s drink." So, if the president is drinking it, he must be just like that Joe Sixpack guy everyone was talking about last time around – right?

The Washington Post has gone so far as to give this theory a name. They called it the "beer vote" and claim that it’s crucial among Independent voters – a sector being targeted by both the Romney and Obama camps.

Why Independents? Well, the Washington Post wrote this: "According to a survey conducted by Scarborough Research, 47 percent of independent voters drank a beer in the past 30 days, while just 40 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of Democrats did."

When White House Press Secretary Jay Carney addressed a few of the questions regarding the beer, he was probed about the brew being brought across state lines by the campaign bus. A direct answer wasn’t given, but if the prez is sneaking beer over state lines, that’s not a classic case of political conundrum, but a rather rare case of political badassery.