Empty gestures

I caught this exchange during the debate last night in which John McCain mentions the remembrance bracelet given to him by the mother of a fallen soldier with the admonishment to not let her son's death be in vain. I don't know if I was looking away at the moment or what, but I didn't catch Barack Obama surreptitiously looking down at his own bracelet to refresh his memory of the soldier's name for - as Michelle puts it - his 'cringe-inducing "me, too" moment'. The video cuts out too soon, because in Obama's "me, too" moment, the soldier's mom asks Obama to not let another soldier go the way of her son.

Aside from revealing the shallowness of Obama's wearing of a bracelet commemorating a soldier whose name he hasn't bothered to remember, the episode points out the differences between the two moms in question. One wants her son's death not to be made pointless by giving up on his mission while the other wants to use her son's death as the very reason to abandon that mission.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that for the Obama supporter, it's all about her grief, her loss. For the McCain supporter, it's all about her son's sacrifice.