CLAUDIA ROSETT: The Obama Narrative Goes to Midway.

Now comes President Obama, who enroute to a G-20 summit in China stopped Thursday on the Midway Atoll for some climate-change grandstanding, a golf-cart motorcade tour and some snorkeling.

According to the New York Times, Obama did make brief mention of the Americans who died defending Midway in World War II, praising their “courage and bravery” and calling Midway “hallowed ground.” But that part of the visit was apparently so perfunctory that the Associated Press reporter missed the message (or did he?), and instead described Obama’s mention of “hallowed ground” as a reference to the place Midway Atoll occupies “in Native Hawaiian tradition.”

Obama’s main purpose in traveling to Midway, according to a White House fact sheet, was to “mark the significance” of his own “historic conservation action” (has Obama done anything during his presidency that the White House has not described as “historic”?) in creating, off the coast of Hawaii, “the world’s largest marine protected area” — and to “highlight firsthand how the threat of climate change makes protecting our public lands and waters more important than ever.”

It’s always about him.