His performance is large-spirited comic acting: a pure specimen of Celtic soulfulness, the magical substance that everyone else in the movie has been trying to produce synthetically.
It is part of a quiet move by the company to be less dependent on synthetically created chemicals, which include the main components in Scotts' distinctive blue Miracle-Gro plant food.
Genomics researcher Craig Venter just announced that he and a team at his eponymous institute have created a genetic code synthetically and inserted it into a bacterium called Mycoplasma capricolum.
Mr Obama's team believe that if they can't have the natural wild magic of 2008, some clever stage craft and behind the scenes mechanics will still synthetically reproduce that winning wizardry in 2012.
They've shown that a synthetically grown sample of herbertsmithite crystal (what you see above) behaves as a quantum spin liquid: a material where fractional quantum states produce a liquid-like flux in magnetic orientations, even if the material is solid.