philosophy and political debates

I watched the first obama/mccain debate....

First I should say, I'm under-whelmed this election cycle. There have been ups and down, yes. But my faith in politics and the "system" just doesn't hold the glow form. People are flawed (often drunk or twisted from power too) and it takes cooperation to get things done, not just a President (with bad or good ideas).

So, let's just say the idealistic me from youth is gone. Yes, I vote. I vote every time. But I'm not so concerned anymore, and so vocal about particular people, by way of promoting them, etc. That is how to embarrass one's self, I think. Or worse become distracted by thinking politics actually solves many things. People, in the trenches, are usually the people who do that.

Now that I've said that preliminary stuff, I wanted to point out that I noticed that neither candidate articulates his core values, philosophies all that well. It's really about strategy. It's a shifting thing. It's two men, from shifting places, speaking in vague terms about assuming a concrete job position in troubled times. McCain has said the place he lived the longest in his life growing was prison camp-5 years, and Obama, moved all over the place too from Hawaii, to Kansas, to elite school after elite school, then ended up, after a bit, in Chicago. I've never seen anything like it. It's really weird, and it doesn't inspire my confidence.

It seems in the quest for the "big title" there has been a misplacement of something very important.... MEANING.

We all need it. It isn't enough to have a goal. We have to have the undergirding in and through the framework of our efforts. This might be true somewhere under the mess of the electoral campaign, but it didn't come out when you would wish to see it the most. The first debate is the plug toward the undecided voter-the commercial. And it underlined the lesson for each of us just how vacuous even the most important of pursuit can look without a sound framework.

It looks like unsightly ambition, grasping... or floating, vanity, even silliness. I'd like to see some meaning.