He Waved Through The Tinted Windows

Teh Won was in Marshalltown, IA campaigning last week.  Andrew Malcolm noted that, “Obama’s experienced advance team had a bunch of flubs.”

The flubs to which Malcolm refers were not as poignant as the moment when, “As the president's big, black armored bus began to waddle its way out of town along one of the leafy streets, a little girl was standing, up ahead. She'd set up a sidewalk lemonade stand, like thousands of kids across the heartland on hot summer days.”

“Many strangers, even non-parents, find it hard to drive by such genuinely small businesses without stopping to feign an immense thirst that can only be quenched by a 50-cent cup of tepid lemonade. And then, claiming a lack of change, they suggest the youngster just keep a dollar bill. It's the way American adults encourage enterprise and independence in the next generation—and feel good about it.”

Presidents don't normally do genuinely spontaneous stops.

“Can you imagine the media coverage if a president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, actually stopped his important, snaking motorcade on the spur of the moment to buy out a little girl's pitcher of homemade lemonade? And perhaps demonstrate that one government official at least cares about helping a small business. Think that touching scene might make the news? Over and over and over?”

Mitt Romney did just that during last fall's New Hampshire primary campaign. And you should have seen the TV crews falling over each other for the shot.  (Romney did so in Logan, UT as well.)

As Obama's huge, ominous vehicle neared the little girl's lemonade stand in Marshalltown, she fell to her knees. Perhaps in awe. More likely pleading.

But the president's big, black bus rolled right on by.

He waved through the tinted windows.

Exit Question:  How long before we are treated to a staged “optic” of the inept messiah buying lemonade in a bogus moment of caring?

Hat Tip Ed Driscoll