What's the big idea? No, really. What is it?

There was a time when a man arose to the Presidency and challenged, rather than entitled, Americans to seek great things.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

It was a heady day, a day of big ideas: a race to the moon, the fight against world-wide communism, ending poverty, civil rights, and more.

Today’s Presidency, though? Big Bird, bayonets, birth control, and government subsidies. Forget about asking what you can do for your country–it’s time to feed at the trough and see what you can get from your country.

And yet, it is small things that dominate the headlines. A Obama campaign ad where a young actor compares voting to losing her virginity. Kids singing about things so obnoxious and outlandish that no adult would go on camera doing the same, even if paid. Yes, there’s a presidential race on, but some take that to mean that almost anything goes.

Meanwhile, more important events transpire. A massive storm is plowing through the Keystone State. flooding much of the East Coast, Diplomats and American servicemen were recently killed in Libya at the hands terrorist, and when the President messed up the response, campaigning through the event, spin took the place of responsibility.

Meanwhile, the media accuses Romney of fudging the facts on the as yet undefined future of a major American automotive manufacturer (soon to possibly become a major Italian automotive manufacturer, or possibly a major Chinese manufacturer, too), and the media is more concerned with splitting hairs on his stump speech than muckraking the President’s record. Chrysler sending manufacturing jobs to Italy is news. Terrorists killing an ambassador with impunity is news. Low brow snubs by the commander-in-chief are not.

And yet, that’s about what the President’s campaign has boiled down to: small ideas and snarky snubs.

DENVER, CO – OCTOBER 01: Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets supporters during a campaign rally at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum on October 1, 2012 in Denver, Colorado. Mitt Romney arrived in Denver ahead of his first debate with U.S. President Barack Obama which will be held on Wednesday October 3. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

That’s almost about it. The entire national debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama has boiled down to a battle between big ideas and small things. It’s a fight between large, broad views of our nation’s legacy on one side and on the other a set of campaign promises and attacks rooted not in good policy, but as puerile as the lowest common denominators that appeals to a very small minority of voters in a minority of states.

In other words, the Obama campaign has become a cross between what is properly called “bread and circuses” and smearing attacks. It’s a campaign of small things. Whether Obama is promising for the federal government to pay for anything voters have come to expect–a cell phone for the perpetually unemployed (because land-lines don’t work?), contraceptives for the sexually active but parentally unprepared, and subsidies for companies with friends in the administration, not to mention a host of items that should be properly managed by the states–or attacking Romney for opposing those very same things, the Obama campaign has become a campaign of the small.

Barack Obama (Photo credit: jamesomalley)

Whether it’s about bayonets, Big Bird, binders, or birth control, President Obama has spent less time talking about how he will lead America back to prosperity than about how his opponent will roll back a liberal agenda.

It’s not so much that there are no big ideas on the left, but more that a majority of Americans don’t want them and would never vote for Barack Obama if they knew and understood them. With that in mind, Obama seeks another term, one in which he will–as he told Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev–“have more flexibility” to do as he wishes. It’s an unpleasant prospect that we might elect someone who doesn’t believe he can act as he would like to because it would be unacceptable to a majority of the American people…at least until he is no longer beholden to them.

So, polls. What are they good for? There is only one that matters, and it’s not for another week. In the meantime, we’re listening to the spin-doctors, pontificators, bloviators, big-talkers, and pundits parse through what the polls mean. But are they talking about the big ideas? Rarely. It’s doing us no good and it’s not raising the conversation to the big issues.

Worse, what if the big issues no longer matter? What if the most we care about is getting our slice of the pie? Whatever happened to “Ask not what your country can do for you…”?