Sure, pressure does increase the temperature, but what's happening is your increasing the pressure of significantly heated air. As I understand it the shuttles bow shock stays under 3ATM during reentry which is hardly enough to be all that interesting by it's self. But, dump enough energy to get air to ~1000c at STP and increase the pressure and you get some real heat.
Also the shuttle is descending (aka falling) from LEO which adds significant kinetic energy, but the ride get's a lot more boring at low mach numbers so when you look at the energy needs to dump in that 'glow/burn' phase it's about the same as orbital velocity.
The point was that heat of re-entry of a blunt object results from compression rather than friction (negligible part), once it reaches the atmosphere (at beginning there is hardly any air and hence temp/heat/compression is small).
First off, both energy and velocity is conserved even though Energy is a function of velocity squared.
So when you mix air of two different velocity's you get direct heating along with the change in velocity. You also get quite a bit of thermal radiation which heat up the air before it feels the physical effects from the craft. So, while the pressure does increase the actual pressure never get's all that high despite the huge increase in temperature. For a sanity check if you assume the energy of the air starts at the equivalent of ~30c at 1ATM and 1ATM = ~15lb/square inch then pressure required to get anywhere close to the observed temperatures get's ridiculous as in 100's of g's of deceleration.
Also, the blunt surface in front of a hyper-sonic aircraft collects a pressure wave off the surface. With the air next to the skin moving at the same relative speed as the craft. So the friction heating precedes the craft, and is negligible right next to it. The aircraft is also cooling the air next to it which is what creates the cooler buffer zone. (This is why they use blunt surfaces in the first place.)
Also the shuttle is descending (aka falling) from LEO which adds significant kinetic energy, but the ride get's a lot more boring at low mach numbers so when you look at the energy needs to dump in that 'glow/burn' phase it's about the same as orbital velocity.