The US campaign has been painted as all about image, but there are policy distinctions - and they do matter. Funny, isn’t it, how we have come this far in the US election campaign, reaching the milestone of results. Despite all the ink spilled, the pages filled and the airwaves crammed with coverage, they complain, there is something large they still don’t know. What, exactly, do these warring candidates stand for?

Partly this is a media mea culpa, to go alongside the, er, misreading of the New Hampshire primary. For what have been the dominant themes so far? Barack Obama’s rhetoric in Iowa, Hillary Clinton’s tears in New Hampshire, the role - asset or liability? - of Bill, the cost or benefit of Obama’s race and of Clinton’s gender. On the Republican side, we’ve had MittRomney’s Mormonism, John McCain’s age and Mike Huckabee’s wit. That’s a bit of a caricature, but not so far off. Policy differences have not exactly been centre stage.

And yet, it would be a grave mistake to conclude that somehow this election is nothing more than a personality contest, albeit a gripping one. We could repeat the old cliche - that, under the surface, all these politicians are the same - but too many made that mistake before. In 2000 it was fashionable to say that Al Gore and George W Bush were ideological twins, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of bland centrism. Now we know, to our cost, how wrong that was. So perhaps today, as the presidential campaign enters a new phase, we should take a hard look at what these candidates are about.

Start with Obama, the candidate who, more than any other, is accused of being light on detail. It’s true that he offers nothing like the programmatic minutiae of Clinton, but it’s still clear where he stands. During the last month, Obama’s standard stump speech opened with a declaration that “The nation is at war and the planet is in peril”. In that single sentence, he signalled two radical breaks with the last eight years, on Iraq and on climate change.

On Iraq, he cites his own early opposition to the war to draw one of his sharpest dividing lines with Clinton. Back in October 2002, when he was a mere member of the Illinois state senate, he addressed an anti-war rally. At that same moment, Hillary Clinton voted in the US Senate to authorise the use of force in Iraq, a decision she has never renounced. Obama doesn’t quote his own speech but it would be powerful if he did. He condemned “a dumb war, a rash war” in terms that look remarkably prescient now.

More than five years on, Obama promises a US withdrawal and “no permanent bases” in Iraq, besides a garrison to protect the US embassy in Baghdad. He would send more troops to Afghanistan. He would then open talks with Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran and Syria, because strong countries “talk to their enemies as well as their friends”.

He would not only end the war in Iraq, he says, but end the “mindset that led to the war in Iraq”. That means an effort to restore America’s standing in the world. He speaks about the assault on civil liberties entailed by what he does not call the “war on terror”.

Clinton touches some of the very same points, even in the same language, though she has wavered on the social security payment question. She, too, is for help with student grants, and keen to forgive the debts of those who become teachers, nurses or police officers. She, too, wants greener energy, favouring micro-generating solutions that would feed electricity back into the grid or that would see solar panels on household roofs.

She also wants to “end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home”, promising to start withdrawing personnel within 60 days of taking office. Her husband says “we’re going to use diplomacy with friend and foe alike”, a slight shift from her earlier condemnation of Obama as “naive and irresponsible” for suggesting he would talk to the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro.

On the large themes that unite Obama and Clinton, the leading Republicans are squarely opposed. During the last month, they have competed to declare their support for the Iraq war: Baptist preacher Huckabee said that just because no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been found it doesn’t mean they weren’t there: “Just because you didn’t find every Easter egg didn’t mean that it wasn’t planted.” Romney promised to double the size of Guantanamo.

On climate change, McCain concedes the problem, but would have little support in his party for taking any action: his arch-rival Romney would only say that man “probably” plays a role in global warming. As for the rest, the social programmes favoured by the Democrats are condemned as wasteful spending, and the need for universal health coverage barely registers. The battle so far may seem to have been about identity politics, resumes and political style. But don’t be misled: the ultimate battle will be about two entirely different conceptions of the US and its place in the world. — The Guardian