October 9, 2007 4:45 PM

Distraction? Shoe enough

UPDATE: See HERE or HERE.

View image Photos by M.E. Sprengelmeyer

There are very few guarantees in politics. But one of them is this.

No matter how hard a presidential candidate tries to act serious by rolling out a heavy, new policy proposal, he or SHE still is in danger of having happenstance step on the message.

And so it was at a community center in Webster City, Iowa, on Tuesday, when an audience member's insistence that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tie her shoes caused an amusing distraction that nearly overshadowed the weighty retirement accounts plan Clinton was there to unveil.

Click here for a better view

First the heavy stuff. As she wrapped up her latest Iowa trip aboard a bus dubbed the "Middle Class Express," Clinton rolled out a proposal to create what she calls, "A 401(k) Plan for All Americans."

It's meant to boost working-class folks who now are forced to work well into their 60s, 70s or even 80s because they haven't been able to set aside enough savings for retirement.

It would create "American Retirement Accounts" as incentives for people to save. Similar to private sector 401(k) plans, it would encourage families to save by offering them refundable tax credits as a partial match. For example, if a married couple earning $60,000 or less opened an account and saved $1,000 or more, then the government would match the first $1,000. Families earning a bit more -- $60,000 to $100,000 per year -- would get a 50 percent match on that first $1,000 per year they set aside.

But that's the policy stuff -- and the set-up costs and other factors of Clinton's proposal are sure to be debated in coming weeks and months.

Clinton was taking audience questions about the proposal and other economic plans at Tuesday's session when a person in the crowd stood and asked a multi-part question. But before finishing, the questioner became quite insistent while looking at Clinton standing there on the edge of the stage.

"Lastly, will you tie your shoes so you don't trip over?"

The audience member made it clear that it was not a joke.

Clinton paused, awkwardly. She glanced down at her shoes. She explained how she had just purchased this spiffy new pair of brown moccasins from a local store and...

And then, she backed up, sat in a chair, and bent over to tie her shoes.

The media mob treated it like the most exciting thing to happen in hundreds of these heavily-scripted campaign stops. Camera folks leapt into action. I, too, leapt into action with my trusty point-and-shoot camera. When the meeting wrapped up a few minutes later, we all swarmed to the rope line to get a picture of the World's Most Famous Moccasins while Clinton was shaking hands and signing autographs.

Bloggers rushed to their computers to chronicle this out-of-the-ordinary moment. And somewhere, I'm sure, an unsuspecting moccasin manufacturer was probably minding his or her own business, unaware that those simple, brown shoes were about to become world famous -- perhaps trend-setting.

The point of it all is this.

When the meeting ended, when I was taking pictures of a network television pal as she crouched on the ground taking pictures of the shoes, it dawned on me that this big, important-sounding retirement accounts plan had suddenly become an afterthought -- a distant second on the list of things most folks in attendance would remember about Clinton's trip to Webster City, Iowa.

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Post-script

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P.S. Some people ask me why "Back Roads to the White House" doesn't refer to the New York Senator by the name her marketing department uses on the campaign signs: "Hillary Clinton." The answer: because that's not the way she refers to herself when she signs autographs -- like the one above from the Webster City appearance.

Posted by M.E. Sprengelmeyer at 4:45 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack