That may be the pose Obama takes when he’s being condescending, but to me, he looks submissive. Like the kid that’s getting yelled at by mom for bad grades.
Notice how cleverly that photograph has been cropped - look around the net or on FR, the original, uncropped photo looks like Obama is pushing Brewer with his right hand on her torso (evidently that photo was published before the Ministry of Truth was able to sanitize it).