With Barack Obama on the precipice of the nomination, there is increased focus on exactly what policy prescriptions he is suggesting. When Hillary Clinton tried to suggest it was “all words,” the media made a collective grimace. She was raining on their Obama-mania parade. What she did not say–because you just can’t say it in a Democratic primary race–is that he offers a bland, warmed-over liberalism.

But now even the Washington Post has noticed, reporting that he “has not emphasized any signature domestic issue, or signaled that he would take his party in a specific direction.” The campaign is really all about him. You either buy into the new politics, the transformative power of good wishes and high ideals, or you think it’s a bunch of hooey.

The Post is not alone in noticing that there is no there there. Daniel Henninger observes that the Democratic primary descended into a personality battle because both candidates agreed on the same liberal policy positions. He says of Obama:

[W]hat the politics of Barack Obama reveal is a very standard liberal, at best.His stated view of how to relieve the plight of young black men in failing school is what the teachers unions have had on offer for 20 years. In July 2007 remarks on selecting judges, reprinted yesterday in the New York Times, Obama conveyed a philosophy grounded in a remarkably explicit obsession with class and incomes. To the entitlement bombs of Social Security and Medicare, he would add expansions of Medicaid and subsidies to some businesses for health-care costs. His desire to raise the cap on Social Security taxes will hit the $100,000 two-income families who applauded Hillary’s appeal on college debt.

Had the Democrats wanted someone whose ideas were innovative and exciting, they wouldn’t have chosen the most predictably extreme ideologue in the U.S. Senate. So if McCain’s campaign has been dinged for lacking a narrative or message–for not putting his views in an easily understandable package–at least he has some that are not shopworn retreads from the 1970’s. Or as Bruce Reed, a key advisor to both Clintons puts it, the Democrats are badly in need of candidate with ” as many proof points as possible that we’re not the weak-on-defense, big-spending liberal the Republicans always say they are.” It is simply not clear they have found that candidate.