He was going to fill in the blanks, a nowhere man no more. He was going to show his human side, to offer us a glimpse of the guy who said he “lives for laughter.” Not lovable, or even very likable, but at least a fleshed-out leader with a plan.

The empty chair that a befuddled Clint Eastwood spoke to had to compete with the famous empty suit of Mitt Romney. In the speech that was supposed to seal the deal with a divided public, the man who sheltered his money in foreign lands went on about his “belief in America”; it sounded like the chords of a flat song. The substance of his speech was the rhetorical equivalent of the elevator music the nominee loves. This was President Platitude, the aspirant.

Romney is not auditioning for orator in chief, so it doesn’t really matter if the speech was more Pat Boone than Winston Churchill. It was absurd, after all, to think that a strangely unknowable man who has been campaigning for president for half a decade would somehow reveal himself in a fresh launch of focus-tested words.

In these ragged times, where progress moves along on three wheels and a flat tire, most Americans do not need to fall in love with a leader. Yet trying to raise the likability meter seemed to be the sole intent of the buildup to the Romney kicker.

From Ann Romney, we heard a tease about a love story. But the days of tuna pasta on an ironing board dining table did not pass the smell test, since it was already known that the honeymooners lived off family stock money.

From Paul Ryan, we got a blue-eyed son of the heartland, likable and plainspoken. Many convention viewers, to cite the old country-western song, went to bed at 2 with a 10 and woke up at 10 with a 2 when they found out that Ryan’s flat-voweled cadence was at odds with the many distortions and falsehoods he delivered from the podium. As for anecdotes about Mitt, the new BFF brought nothing to the authenticity potluck.

So it was up to the nominee to fill in the blanks. Guess what? He loved his parents. He loves his wife and kids, and one of them speaks Spanish. He loves women. He loves his church, and was there when fellow Mormons needed him. “We prayed together, our kids played together and we always stood ready to help each other out in different ways,” he said. “And that’s how it is in America.”

Great. Give the man a hand and a plaque for his wall and send him on his way.

At the very least, we wanted a story — a grand narrative about the leader and about a nation stuck in a Groundhog Day economy. Who are you? Where do you want to take us? And please, some details.

But in the same way that this convention failed to fill the shell of Romney the man, the big speech came with no telling specifics on how he would govern. Romney has provided no detailed blueprint because what is known of the limited blueprint is unpopular. Cut taxes on the rich. Prolong old wars, and even intervene in new ones, without even mentioning the service members now risking their lives in the longest of these forgotten conflicts. Put gay soldiers back in the closet, or kick them out. Ignore climate change. (The delegates laughed at the idea.) Cut or kill government aid to students, the poor, energy entrepreneurs and the arts.

“President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet,” said Romney. “My promise is to help you and your family.”

How? A few specifics on the plan to create those 12 million new jobs he’s promising would have helped. Corporations are sitting on piles of cash; interest rates are rock bottom; and taxes on the wealthy have not been this low since Chatsworth Osborne Jr., was palling around with Dobie Gillis.

And his prescription is for more of the same: tax cuts, wealth concentration, corporations as people with the best rights money can buy.

Romney was lucky that he did not have to be heard above a hurricane. How would it sound to bash government while thousands of Americans looked for their salvation to a newly built, 133-mile ring of levees, flood walls, gates and pumps paid for by taxpayers?

“I am who I am,” Romney said in the run-up to Thursday night’s speech, a way to lower expectations that weren’t that high to begin with.

Yes, we knew. Sort of. The man to bring universal health care to his state did not mention that stupendous feat; it was airbrushed out, Soviet style, from the film that introduced Romney. A man whose father walked out on the Barry Goldwater convention of 1964 because it was too extreme let the heirs to those toxic politics write a platform that would move the country backward by two generations.

At the end of the night, the great mystery remained: not just who is Mitt Romney, but how does he cut taxes, raise or maintain defense spending, save Medicare and do it all without adding to a burden of debt that may outlive Romney himself. He gave no answer, because the real substance of his campaign is a construct built on a fantasy. Now he has to sell it.

The Republican team of Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan is less about the future than it is about nostalgia for a past that many Americans imagine was better — a time when businessmen were free of government meddling and all citizens, even the poor, old or handicapped, were expected to fend for themselves or scrape by on charity.

From the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, a different, liberal ethic drove our politics, even during the Republican administrations of Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. That ethic said government must provide a safety net for the less fortunate among us and set limits on business interests that foul the environment, exploit workers and bamboozle consumers.

With Reagan, the old conservative ethic regained ascendancy, in part due to the excesses and failings of well-intentioned liberal programs. This ethic said government had intruded too much in the economy and had coddled unproductive citizens at the expense of those who worked hard and carried their own weight. Even Democrat Bill Clinton bowed to this new dominant ethic when he signed into law measures that stiffened welfare requirements and eliminated restraints on banks and other financial institutions.

Now, with the political pendulum stuck between the contending philosophies of right and left, the 2012 election offers voters a stark choice between the classic liberalism of the Obama administration and the militant conservatism of the Republican “young guns” in the House of Representatives. With one of the most prominent of those young guns, Paul D. Ryan, tapped as Romney’s choice for vice president, it is clear the Republican Party wants more than a restoration of the compromising conservatism of Reagan. The GOP seeks a return to the good old days of McKinley and Taft.

The budget plans that Ryan has put forward as chairman of the House Budget Committee would underfund or seriously alter nearly every liberal program instituted since FDR’s New Deal. His schemes would also lower taxes on the rich to a level not seen since the 1920s while whittling away at the deductions for home mortgages and philanthropic giving that have helped the middle class. In 2010, he proposed a complete elimination of the capital gains tax, a step that would allow people who live off their investments — people such as Mitt and Ann Romney – to pay no taxes at all.

The America Ryan longs for seems more like 1912 than 2012. Certainly, it was a simpler time a century ago. The majority of Americans were white, God-fearing Protestants who lived on farms or in small towns. Only a tiny elite went to college. The rich were very rich while the broad working class earned modest incomes through long days of labor in mines, in factories and in the fields. Women stayed at home. Black Americans were kept in their place. Politicians were in the pockets of the wealthy. Only wild-eyed socialists dreamed of helping the elderly with government-provided pensions and medical care.

Over the last 100 years, the planks of the Socialist Party platform of 1912 — items like a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and precursors to Social Security and Medicare — became mainstream ideas and pillars of American life. During the liberal era, a huge middle class was created as the American economy became the most vibrant and innovative in the world. The income gap between the rich and everyone else narrowed. A college education became the norm. Most people moved to the cities or suburbs. Women left home and went to work. The U.S. became a more equal, multi-racial society.

The core question before voters in this campaign season is which ethic — conservative or liberal — will guide our society in this new century. A lot of the folks supporting the Romney-Ryan ticket are shouting that they want to take their country back, but back to what?

Can a 21st century nation thrive with a return to the policies of William Howard Taft?

Thomas L. Friedman