But a more ideological opposition could re-cast ideological blandness as a major shortcoming.
Of course, voters who want to cast an ideological protest vote for Mr. Nader have a perfect right to do so.
The heavy hand of American domestic and foreign policy in shaping economic outcomes tends to get ignored in current policy debates, in which economic issues are usually cast in ideological terms, devoid of their historical context.
Those "safe hands" advertised at Philadelphia four years ago men such as Mr Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are now more often cast as ideological revolutionaries, often fiendish ones.There is exaggeration in this, and often crass anti-Americanism (more on that later).
And these arguments had no obvious ideological cast.
The ultimate problem with Gingrich's firehose approach to idea-generation wasn't the ideological cast of the ideas but their practicality.
Likewise, ordinary Egyptians need to cast aside their ideological opposition to dealing with Israelis and help facilitate and mediate such a "people's peace".
Senator Schumer, who had maintained that the administration was trying to give the judiciary an ideological cast, said simply that he would study the nominees closely.
As China has cast off its ideological past and aggressively modernized its cities, it might reasonably have been expected to look to Europe or Japan for models of urban planning.
Social trends and ideological casts are easy to talk about, as are the diverse traits of habit or style that render a formerly overlooked filmmaker distinguishable.
Far from clashing with the general liberal cast of Bloomberg's ideological profile, this one piece completes it.
