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Some things are starting to worry some Liberals.

1. The economy isn't sinking. It won't propel them to power.

2. The Harper Conservatives aren't going to defeat themselves.

3. Liberals can't win by trying to be all things to all people. Paul Martin tried that.

4. Michael Ignatieff isn't capturing the public imagination, as earlier hoped.

A good many in the party want to reboot - and they want to do it now. The initial idea was that the combination of their new leader and a brutal recession would lead them back to the promised land. Being proactive wasn't necessary. But the economy is rebounding earlier than expected. Stephen Harper is back on his feet. Liberal polling numbers have stalled. Media reviews are unflattering.

There is concern the Liberal leader is risk-averse. Mr. Ignatieff, some worry, is still thinking things through - something intellectual types are inclined to do. In their wisdom, these leaders see the complexities of the issues, the grey zones, the competing shades and they hedge. Vague imagery results.

What to do? Get out some bold policy initiatives, many in the party say. Give the leader definition. Give Canadians a vision. Roll the dice.

But it's not about to happen. Instead, the Grits are gambling that no change of tack before an election campaign is necessary. “The plan,” a senior Ignatieff strategist said yesterday, “is steady as she goes.”

If there is worry among the rank and file about lack of policy, there isn't at party central. “The game is not policy, it's politics,” the adviser bluntly observed. He noted how Stéphane Dion brought out his Green Shift plan well before an election. Look what happened, he said. By the time the campaign rolled around, the Conservatives had undermined it. “You don't draw a target on yourself. Sure there are many in the party who are upset. I can live with it. We started in January with a plan - and we haven't moved off it.”

In the spring, it looked as if Mr. Ignatieff was coming forward with a national vision of strengthened east-west linkages. He talked of energy corridors, a national power grid. It's a time to be “daring,” he said, just as politicians were when they tied the country together with a ribbon of steel. But nothing has been heard on the energy highway plan since. His advisers say he is still very interested in national projects but wouldn't say whether this one was still on or not.

Some Liberals want a renewed emphasis on a traditional Liberal strongpoint: social policy. An Ekos poll recently showed health care has returned to top the list of Canadian concerns. “I would argue we have to get back on terrain where we are comfortable and the Conservatives are not, ” said one insider. “Conservatives are comfortable with tax-cutting, anti-crime measures, a hard-line foreign policy and the military. Leave that terrain to them.”

But the emphasis has been on holding the government to account, as Mr. Ignatieff tried to do last month on employment insurance, the shortage of isotopes and a plan for eliminating the national deficit. While Liberals feel validated on those issues, they didn't score in the court of public opinion. A media consensus emerged that Mr. Ignatieff appeared indecisive. He tried to walk a middle line between wanting an election and not wanting one. It didn't work. There is also a sense he is hesitant to attack the Prime Minister in a way the Prime Minister has attacked him. That, however, is something that according to strategists, will change. Attacks are coming soon.

A concession the Liberals did win from Mr. Harper last month, besides a multiparty review of EI policy, was an Opposition day vote in late September. It will allow the Liberals to potentially force an election at that time as opposed to months later.

But if the Liberals don't change tack now, if they continue to drift, what position will they be in to go to the polls at that time? They would have only a short five-week campaign to turn things around. No big deal, said Liberals at party central. “In politics, things change real fast.”

With their roll-no-dice strategy, they better hope so.