Stars in the ascendant: Barack and Cameron and the transatlantic political divide

 

Tim Shipman

 

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One of them is selling a message of hope and complaining about politics as usual. The other is Barack Obama.

 

One of them is a gifted speechmaker who has faced scrutiny over the kind of school he went to. The other is David Cameron.

 

Obama and Cameron, Bam and Cam. But to talk to some Tories these days you would think that they are one and the same, a cyborg phenomenon called Obameron: a fresh-faced man in his forties sent to slay the dragon of an older, less media savvy opponent.

 

Looking back, it used to be the case that political fortunes on one side of the Atlantic begat changes on the other. For five decades after the war, every time Britain or the US changed governments, the other nation moved in the same political direction at the next election. Churchill's victory in 1951 presaged Eisenhower's in 1952; Kennedy's win in 1960 led to Wilson's four years later and so on, through Nixon and Heath, Wilson and Carter, Thatcher and Reagan, until Clinton's New Democrats gave birth to New Labour in the 1990s.

 

But all that ended with George W. Bush's narrow squeak into the Oval Office in 2000. With American Democrats and British Conservatives in the ascendant, many of the British right are now pinning their hopes on emulating the American party of the left.

 

So is David Cameron the British Obama?

 

The comparisons are not entirely fatuous. Both are accomplished platform speakers and both have absorbed the lesson of Ronald Reagan that voters prefer to be inspired with a positive vision of what a nation can be than threatened with a dark vista of what it has become. They are also both noticeably cool under pressure - a trait that separates them from Gordon Brown and John McCain.

 

Clark Judge, who was one of Mr. Reagan's best speechwriters and a keen student of Westminster politics, puts it like this: "Each is challenging an incumbent party running low in the polls.  So each is presenting himself as the hopeful alternative, the vessel of change".

 

Rhetorically there is some overlap as well. Obama's claim to voters that "We are the change that we have been waiting for", has echoes in Cameron's "Be the change", although his is a message directed more at traditionalists in his own party, (start being nice to the planet and the immigrants) rather than the electorate at large.

 

The Tories, George Osborne in particular, remain fascinated by Obama's phenomenal internet fundraising and operational ability. But so, equally, is Gordon Brown, who talked enthusiastically on his March trip to Washington to other journalists and myself about the lessons Labour can learn from the Democratic nominee.

 

Both men also have that vital but indefinable political virtue: momentum. History appears to be offering both a certain entitlement, butin different ways.

 

Exotic as Old Etonians are in modern politics, they are scarcely as rare in No 10 as African Americans are in the Oval Office.

 

This gives a power to Obama's candidacy that Cameron can't equal. Mr. Judge says: "Obama's central propositions are that America is in a state of sin, manifested by the divisions among us and that the act of electing him will wash away - or at least begin the washing away-of those sins. Deliverance is through election.  What happens after the election is, rhetorically, almost immaterial.  You can't imagine Cameron carrying any message remotely like that one.

 

"Cameron is an instrumental politician.  He's all about policies and programmes.  Obama is a cultural politician.  He's about the state of national grace with policies and programs playing a secondary role, at least in his rhetoric."

 

However, if Obama's message is more bewitching, in other respects the Tory leader has an advantage. The American is not nearly as far ahead in the polls as the economic circumstances and the unpopularity of the governing party suggest he ought to be.

 

The reason for that is his opponent, John McCain, who is certainly not a conventional Republican. McCain has praised Cameron as a "breath of fresh air", which ironically flags up the fact the same cannot be said of the grizzled 71-year-old war veteran.

However, when it comes to political positioning the genetically engineered politician we need to study is not Obameron but McCameron.

 

The force of intellectual conservatism usually flows from West to East, which is no longer the case.

 

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who is both a conservative and an admirer of Mr. Obama put it this way: "The flow of ideas has changed direction. It used to be that American conservatives shaped British political thinking - now the influence is going the other way."

 

John McCain is happy to acknowledge that his outlook is partly inspired by that of his younger transatlantic colleague. "What Mr. Cameron is trying to do is what I've been trying to do," he said when visiting Britain, "preserve your base principles and philosophies, but also see how you can shape those policies to attract what is viewed as the independent voter."

 

Doug Forrester, an American conservative who blogs at race42008.com, summarised the views of Brooks and others like this: "The argument over the size of government is no longer deciding elections. Instead the main issues are the efficiency of government and its effectiveness in improving quality of life. On those issues British Conservatives have revived their party."

 

Mr. Judge says Cameron and McCain have the same approach.

 

"McCain is looking to fight to a tie on issues like the energy, health care and the environment - all issues the Democrats have historically dominated," he said. "He will contrast his positions on taxes and spending with Obama's, hoping to neutralise Obama's advantage on the economy as a whole.  If all that works, he will go for a win on national security.

 

"Cameron is making an even more aggressive play on energy, the environment and the state of national services, all issues on Labour's turf.  He is hoping, it appears to me, not just to tie on but to capture those issues.

 

The proof that Cameron and McCain are playing the same game is shown by the suspicion with which they are both treated by party traditionalists.

 

"Many conservatives in the US are skeptical of Cameron," says Clark Judge. "To them, he looks like the UK equivalent of a Rockefeller Republican, embracing the opposition party's big government agenda, advocating more of a change in management than of direction."

 

So the message in all this is that while young Tories, long in opposition, have much in common with young Democrats who have found a candidate capable of taking them out of the wilderness, they need to remember two things.

 

The first is that whatever the stylistic similarities between Bam and Cam, they ought not to fixate on them. Gordon Brown will be watching Obama too. While the Prime Minister is probably incapable of imitating Obama's empathy and delivery, he is likely to benefit from emulating his political organisation.

 

The best lesson for both British parties to draw from Mr. Obama is the one Brooks noted when Obama abandoned his pledge to take public election financing: that as well as being an inspiring speechmaker he's also "a tough-minded Chicago pol (person of Polish descent) who would throw you under the truck for votes".

 

Cameron and Obama will both need to be more ruthless than their opponent, if they are to end the decade-long political ascendancy of their political rivals.

 

In the most important regard they are in the same boat. Neither of them has won yet.