The upcoming primary elections in the United States receive a lot of attention from around the globe. As the war in Iraq continues, the world is united around one, universal hot-button topic. Today more than ever, the ongoing campaign leading up to the American presidential election takes the form of an international political event.

Axess Magazine decided to sit down and listen to two men from opposite sides of the American political spectrum; Robert Shapiro worked as undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under Clinton. He is also the founder of the Progressive Policy Institute. David Frum has been one of George W Bush’s speechwriters and is today working at the American Enterprise Institute. They agreed to share their respective views on the United States’ future role in international affairs, the political divide between Europe and the US, and what to expect in the presidential election campaign.

JN: Two factors in American politics seem to stand out at the moment. The first one is Hillary Clinton’s political aura. The second is the way all candidates, Democrats as well as Republicans, are keen on connecting with more conservative values. Can these two ingredients help us understand the upcoming primary election campaign and where the US, as a nation, is heading?

Robert Shapiro: It is interesting. Whenever I’m in Europe I hear that Hillary is a given frontrunner all the time. But it is certainly not what Democrats say. Barack Obama has an enormous amount of power right now, within the Democratic party. His fundraising ability is definitely better than Hillary’s. And on top of that, he is creating what no one else in America has right now, which is a personal following. We haven’t seen that in a long time. Bill Clinton had it, Ronald Reagan had it, but I don’t think anyone else in American politics has it right now. Hillary can, in traditional terms, be seen as the most qualified candidate. She is engaged, she is informed and she has extraordinary experience. But she is also an enormously controversial figure, particularly among voters on the right. If I was to pick only three Democratic contenders I would definitely have both Obama and Clinton, and then John Edwards in third place. But things change fast and in a few months Barack Obama’s success may have turned into failure. Just look at John McCain. Six months ago he was going to be the nominee for the Republican party. And after that everything seems to have gone wrong for him. And the same downfall can happen to other candidates. The question is whether Rudy Giuliani will look as good in six months as he is doing right now. I talk a lot with people who spend their lives in the Democratic party and I had a discussion just recently with a senior media advisor to one of the two major candidates for the Democratic party. The question we both asked was how the Republicans can unite themselves behind any one of their three top contenders: John McCain—the right hates him and he is out of money; Giuliani—he’s pro-life, he’s pro gay rights, and he has arguably the least likeable personality in American politics. I’m sorry if you don’t agree with that, David. Finally there is Mitt Romney, a guy who seems to be able to believe anything as long as he gets elected.

David Frum: But the party has to elect someone!

Shapiro: Exactly! So I hope you can explain to me how this is going to turn out. Does this mean that there is an opening for Fred Thompson?

Frum: Yes, I think that Fred Thompson is the perfect candidate to respond to the internal needs of the Republican party. And that is the secret of his success. As every Republican concludes, our coalition is smaller this year than it has been in the eight years passing. One of the things that I am struck by, quite honestly, in this cycle—and this is to answer your first question about conservatism—is that there is no candidate who has a consistent base in the social conservative wing of the party, which has been so important to nomination processes for so long. Some of them, like Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson, have become more socially conservative, but only very recently. And none of the candidates on the Republican side have the real convictions of that once decisive nominating part of the party.

JN: Would you not say that Mitt Romney has been showing a lot of dedication in order to package himself as a social conservative candidate? His recent visit to the CPAC convention is just one example where he has been very keen on stressing his connection with the conservative base.

Frum: Well, people have memories, and Mitt Romney has a political history, which goes back to 1968. He has a father and he has a mother. These people are well known. They have been active in American politics for decades. And the voters will be kept informed about where they stood on the issues. I believe that the social conservatives would have preferred someone from their own lines.

Shapiro: So what is the reason behind the lack of strong social conservative Republicans among the candidates?

Frum: There was a social conservative candidate, but he exploded. The social conservatives had been anticipating being able to line up behind George Allen. When he was removed they were left with a series of bad choices; either wind up with a candidate who has changed his views or two minor candidates who are equally unacceptable to a broader audience. Sam Brownback is unacceptable because he has the most radical point of view on immigration. He is in favor of amnesty. And that is a huge issue in the Republican party. Republicans are really energised by that issue.

JN: What about George Bush and his involvement with the amnesty issue? Do you think Bush’s approach, in favour of amnesty, has made an impact on the Republican party?

Frum: This is the interesting part. Every time Bush raised the issue he would be beaten down. And he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. It is like a bear to a honey-pot. He campaigned on it in 2000, and the party didn’t like it. He tried to advance it in 2001 and 2002, and 2004. And there was a mutiny every time. This is one domestic issue in which Bush has been absolutely consistent. He is in favor of continental migration rights, and his party is not.

Shapiro: What about Huckabee and Brownback?

Frum: What about Huckabee? Hmm… He is a likable guy. He has done a fantastic job in the Republican debates. I think the problem with Huckabee is that he is a social conservative and that’s it. He doesn’t have a genuine foreign policy. Brownback, on the contrary, keeps making mistakes. In one of the debates Brownback was asked about his view on abortions. I knew he was a pro-lifer but I didn’t know that he was opposed to abortions even in cases of rape. He actually took time in the debate in order to explain his position. I imagine that a lot of Republicans who would consider themselves pro-lifers probably think that is going rather far and that it is maybe also a little unnecessarily provocative to discuss this issue. If we take all of this into consideration we can see how the lack of strong conservative candidates, together with the demolition of McCain’s candidacy, has helped Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

JN: Getting back to the earlier question posed by Mr Shapiro, one would maybe think that Giuliani would be a faux-pas as a Republican candidate for a number of conservative reasons? What about his stance as a pro-choice candidate, for example?

Frum: It is weird, but it does not seem to be affecting him.

Shapiro: Will the Republicans vote strategically?

Frum: Oh, people always vote strategically. However, they don’t always vote intelligently. I mean, the Democrats nominated John Kerry.

Shapiro: That was a strategic choice!

Frum: If they wanted to vote strategically they should have cast their votes for Dick Gephardt.

JN: It is interesting that we already have made comparisons with the 2004 elections. Are there any lessons to be drawn from that campaign? What about the Howard Dean factor during the primaries? What was the strategy behind the battle within the Democratic party to get rid of Howard Dean as a frontrunner? Did the joint assaults have anything to do with the fact that John Kerry scored higher on ‘electability’ surveys?

Shapiro: No, Howard Dean made three mistakes. One was that he was so far ahead that he became the target of everybody, and everybody just piled up on him, they had to stop Howard Dean. The second mistake was that the strategic voters decided “he’s not plausible.” The third mistake was something that one needs to think about with respect to Obama—he had this enormous support among young people. And they just don’t vote.

JN: The barking dog that doesn’t bite?

Shapiro: Yeah, they just don’t vote. They’re very enthusiastic, they were very enthusiastic for Dean and they are very enthusiastic for Obama today. But you simply can not trust them to turn up at the ballots.

Frum: Although I saw data that suggested that Dean did best among the oldest voters who were well established.

Shapiro: Well, I’m sure that’s right because the young people were not there.

Frum: At the same time, we have to remember that the Democratic party and the Republican party are very top-down kind of organisations. American politics can best be explained as two organisations each of which is organised to solve or address a particular problem. The Democratic party is organised to stop the great depression and the Republican party is organised to stop inflation and beat the Soviet Union. Now, as you have noticed, the problem is that both of these sets of tasks have been accomplished. But it has been very hard for the parties to find themselves new tasks, and so what they tend to do is to offer encore performances of their last tasks. In 1992 we saw this when Paul Tsongas was running for the Democratic party.

JN: And he carried New Hampshire.

Frum: Yeah! He promised to fight the great depression and most centralizing aspects of the New Deal, he was going to do it all over again.

Shapiro: I agree with your basic view, but he only carried New Hampshire because the Gennifer Flower news exploded in Bill Clinton’s face.

Frum: Well, the problem with discussing candidates like this is that parties act like tribes. If you are outside of the tribe it is always hard to know how people inside the tribe will act. I think every Republican at this point (during the primary campaign) in 2004 would have said that the Democrats will probably nominate Dick Gephardt because that would be the most intelligent thing for them to do, from our standpoint and given our vulnerabilities. That was of course completely wrong.

Shapiro: David is exactly right. When you are not inside the tribe you see things completely different. Take for example the way in which religion influences the political discourse. We can say that it is a good idea to get religion out of politics. But of course it does not stay out of politics. It has come in through issues of values, because some issues that have been defined as social policies also have religious significance; abortion being the obvious one. One of the weaknesses of the Democratic party has been its inability to appreciate the religious feelings of non-conservative Americans. That is why you see Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama talking about religion. Incidentally, I know Hillary. I have known her for 20 years, and I know that she has always been religious, personally religious; although she has never talked about it openly. Whether or not she is talking about it now is because Mark Penn (at Burson-Marsteller) is telling her to, I don’t know. But this is one way in which the Democratic party has been able to reconnect with many Americans. In my view, I think this is progress for the Democratic party.

Frum: What you are saying about religion is a very interesting question for the 2008 race. I think it is difficult for Europeans to understand what religion means in American politics. When Europeans look at all this religiosity they seem to feel something like “My gosh! The place is full of Holy Rollers. It is like Saudi Arabia, the only difference is the amount of interstate highways and McDonalds restaurants.” I think this is a complete misunderstanding of what has been going on with religion in electoral politics. Religion only became a big issue in American politics in the middle of the 1970s. My hypothesis is that in the middle of the 1970s America was becoming a much more unequal society in which the consequences of good choices and bad choices were becoming clear. If you organise your life well, you can have real comfort. But if you organise your life badly the consequences of failure are more severe, relatively speaking. So people became very anxious, and they started to see immorality—drugs, teen pregnancy and all kinds of personal misconducts—not only as a problem but as a direct threat to their way of life. Religion simply became a way in which these fears could be channeled. I think you can see it in a lot of indicators that religion is playing a receding role in American politics. It is being replaced by emotional forms of nationalism.

Shapiro: I agree with David about the rise of nationalism, although I’m not sure I would have characterised it like that. But there are obviously more traditional, nationalist feelings in the US today than in the 1990s. There seems to be an ever-present perception of an enemy, that the country is under attack from economic and political threats around the world and that America’s geopolitical position is going to involve a continuing incursion. Nationalism works well with these fears. Americans have, for example, turned against the war in Iraq—not because they reject the intervention, but because they reject the failure. And the failure is palpable. It will be a heavy burden for the Republican party to carry in the upcoming election.

Frum: I think you asked “How is it that Rudy Giuliani can be a strong candidate with all his baggage? How can he be a viable candidate?” And there is the answer. The Republicans say, “Is there anyone in our party that has taken on a seemingly hopeless situation and solved it. Do we have anybody in our party who, when he sees people underperforming, fires them, deals with the task and does not rest until the problem is fixed?” And they have answered: “That sounds like a job for Rudy”.

Shapiro: No matter who steps up to the plate for the Republicans the Iraq war will be the decisive question where candidates are forced to distance themselves from Bush.

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Frum: You know, it is really fascinating what Robert said, that Americans hate to lose more than anything. The Vietnam parallel breaks down because we do not have anything that looks like an anti-war movement in the United States today. There is plenty of pessimism, but that is all.

Shapiro: In Vietnam we were members of an imperial power who should not have been there. The issue in Iraq is that we somehow belong to the first sole superpower with no near peer, in 1700 years, that manages to lose a war against an inferior insurgency.

JN: In his book, After the Neocons, Francis Fukuyama argues that the Iraq war has made all parts of neoconservative theory impossible to implement in international relations in the future, even the way of understanding foreign relations by analysing domestic circumstances. Do you agree?

Frum: It is possible. We can at least conclude that the war will have real effects on American foreign policy for a long time. What we are now seeing is a footnote being applied to the Carter Doctrine. Since 1979 the United States has said that we are prepared to go to war, even nuclear warfare, to stop any other political power from controlling the oil recourses in the Middle East. Today we can confirm that the US is changing its approach towards a number of states, including Iran. What this war leads to might not be a new world order, but rather a new Middle East strategy for the United States.

JN: How will this affect the relations between Europe and the United States?

Shapiro: Well, we can clearly see the decline of Europe, both economically and in terms of military capacity. In the economic world the United States is the sole superpower with no near peer. While the US has modernised its defense capabilities, Europe has instead outsourced the ability to defend itself to the United States. At the same time we see how the EU has introduced institutions that work against the economic forces of globalisation. The results are plain and simple. Europe is regressing. The average income in the United States is today 28 per cent higher than in Great Britain, 36 per cent higher than in Germany and Japan, and 40 per cent higher than in France. In ten to fifteen years time, Americans estimate that they will earn 50 per cent more than the average European. That’s a remarkable difference which clearly shows the United States’ role as a financial superpower.

Frum: I don’t take it as cheerfully as you do.

Shapiro: It’s not cheerful, it is what it is.

Frum: I think what happens when Europe’s importance declines and the United States will have an almost absolute influence over a large part of the world, is that the prestige of democratic values is going to shrink. If the British stop teaching Shakespeare to the children in British schools, how are Americans going to be able to teach Shakespeare to the children of Mexico? In short: when Europe loses its influence the United States loses its ability to be a child of European culture.

Shapiro: See, I don’t see it that way, at all, and here’s why. Maybe it has something to do with us Democrats having a more positive approach on these issues than conservatives. Europe has an ability of self-correction. We see it in Ireland, we see it in Sweden in certain ways, and we see it in Great Britain. Although these are positive signs it is hard to turn away from the fact that Europe is poorer than it needs to be. And I would still hope that Europe was more powerful in terms of military capacity, in order to defend itself.

Frum: And yet, although there are strong ties between the two continents it is sad to see how European politicians time after time are trying to win domestic points, and profit politically, by verbally attacking the relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, such political rhetoric can create real difficulties for strong relations across the Atlantic.

Shapiro: We should not forget that there are so many things that bind Europe and the US together—strong cultural, financial and political ties are not that easy to break down. The US-European alliance also benefits from the way the United States has become the indispensable market for European goods. The European market has chosen a regulatory structure which, because it cannot generate enough jobs for itself, requires increased reliance on export. And we are the buyer of last resort. Because of this, the US-Europe bonds are so strong I don’t see anything that can harm that in the near future.