He comes off as wooden and manipulating as his reputation but his office continues sending out staged photos of Canada’s Prime Minister in the hopes that the feel-good pics will be picked up by newspapers and even blogs.

The Globe and Mail has a few of them with comment, but the one the sticks indelibly in the mind is the picture of him shaking hands with his 8 year-old-kid as he left him off at school.

But this image is a close second, not so much for the shot but for the skin-scrawling caption that accompanies the photo. You know he’d be dinning down on seal meat ever since Governor General Michaelle Jean was so widely-celebrated for her snack of seal heart. But this?

“The Prime Minister said, ‘I really enjoyed eating seal meat and look forward to having it again,’ ” an e-mail from a PMO spokesman informed reporters.

This visual pablum does little more than speak about a man who has the sensitivity and compassion of a Machiavelli.

Would you want to relax and have a beer with this man? No, he’d take a sip and be gone.