At some point in every presidential campaign, candidates put on their most somber face, look directly into a TV camera and tell us the road ahead will be difficult.

For candidate Michele Bachmann, that moment arrived in colorful fashion Sunday when she told an interviewer that she has a “titanium spine for doing what we need to do.”

Titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal, which makes it a particularly good metaphor for the small but spunky Bachmann.

Recent polls, which are admittedly meaningless at this point, show her suddenly as popular as Republican leader Mitt Romney.

Still, in an interview with Fox News, she offered few specifics.

Candidate Tim Pawlenty had his tough-talk moment last month.

“I could promise that we can eliminate a $14 trillion debt, create jobs for 10 million people, restructure Social Security and health care, all without making any tough decisions,” he said during a video announcing his campaign for president.

“Or, I could try something different. I could just tell you the truth.”

Pawlenty then laid out the same sort of economic plan we’ve seen over the last decade: even lower taxes coupled with unrealistically high projections of growth.

The current record holder for phony tough talk is President Barack Obama, who in three years has put forth no long-range plan for changing the country’s ruinous direction of long-term debt.

His health care bill depends upon fuzzy, yet-to-be determined cuts to Medicare that are unlikely to occur, while promising a range of new and expanded benefits to millions of people.

Cuts will be made, according to the Obama plan, but down the road, and by someone else.

There is talk in the Obama plan about increasing efficiencies and moving to “outcomes-based medicine” rather than our current “fee-for-service” system.

But a report last week on a pilot outcomes-based spending program in Massachusetts showed just the opposite, expenses went up, not down.

Ideas like computerization of records and promoting wellness may help, but Medicare’s financial picture is so bleak that they will never solve the program’s deficit problem.

A recent Associated Press poll found that 60 percent of Americans think what they are paying now in Medicare taxes will cover their retirement health care expenses.

In reality, however, even a couple earning $89,000 per year wouldn’t come close to paying enough in Medicare taxes in their working lives to pay for their promised retirement health care benefits.

That couple, according to the AP, would have paid $114,000 into Medicare over a lifetime of work. After retirement, that couple would draw an average of $355,000 in health care benefits.

Real talk on Medicare would sound like this: Recipients will get fewer benefits with higher co-pays. Workers will pay higher taxes. Providers will be paid less money.

The first idea is unimaginable to Democrats, the second is unthinkable to Republicans and the third unacceptable to drug makers and health care providers.

But that’s the tough talk Americans need to hear.

The way ahead will be difficult. Soon, someone had better do more than just say so.

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The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.