Combs Spouts Off

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The lemonade stand that wasn’t visited

Posted by Richard on August 20, 2012

At Investor’s Business Daily, Andrew Malcom reported that the President’s three-day swing through Iowa didn’t go all that well. Crowds were small, and there were several flubs and embarrassing moments.

  • The Iowa farm with all the windmills that Obama likes turns out to be owned by a family that said there’s no way they’re voting for him.
  • The photo op at the state fair beer tent cost that business thousands when the Secret Service closed them down hours before the President’s arrival. And the owner of that business isn’t voting for Obama either.
  • At one of the Obama events, the caterer wore a “Government Didn’t Build My Business” T-shirt.

But Malcom thought the most important moment of the trip was something that didn’t happen in Marshalltown:

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.

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.

I’m surprised that he didn’t lean out of the bus to shout at the little girl, “You didn’t build that lemonade stand!”

(HT: David Aitken)

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