The Occasional Observer

Blockquote below is from Investor's Business Daily. Hat tip to Mark Lowe at Race 4 '12.

THE AMAZING LITTLE STORY THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

… 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.


… Presidents don’t normally do genuinely spontaneous stops. They’re important people, with a large entourage that knows important. Modern presidents’ spontaneous stops are as spontaneous now as D-Day. They’re carefully arranged, precisely-secured photo ops for ice cream or such, with adjacent streets closed and any other customers wanded by Secret Service in serious sunglasses.

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.

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.