The news you didn't see or hear.

The amazing little story that didn't happen on Obama's big bus trip

By ANDREW MALCOLM

President Obama was back in Iowa for several days this past week. He has winning memories there. But the fact that an incumbent president feels it necessary to invest three of only 79 precious remaining days there says how close the presidential race now is.

Obama's experienced advance team had a bunch of flubs. That farm family with all the windmills that President Quixote loves to laud turns out to be Republicans and informed reporters after Obama's visit that he sure wasn't getting their votes this time.

There was the state fair beer tent where Obama bought a round of Bud Lights for everyone, except the guy with the Mitt Romney sign. Great summertime photo op. Except it turns out the Secret Service closed down the guy's tent long before Obama's arrival and the small business owner lost thousands in sales.

Then there was the caterer who wore a "Government Didn't Build My Business" T-shirt to work the president's event. Our friend Tom Bevan at the must-read RealClearPolitics has all the details here.

But the moment that sticks out in our mind was something that didn't happen during the president's Iowa trip.

It didn't happen in Marshalltown. There, the president gave another one of his great-to-be-back-in-Iowa-we-still-have-much-to-do speeches at the junior high. "Four more years," someone usually yells. He shook some hands.

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. 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.