To become president of the United States of America all you have to do is (1) be born in the US, a constitutional requirement that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admirers would like to see changed; (2) persuade the activists who dominate the nominating process to contribute about $100m and select you as their standard bearer; and (3) persuade voters in states with a majority of members of the electoral college that you are the person to secure the nation and produce continued prosperity.

The money is needed to finance the private jets to whisk a candidate from a breakfast speech in New York, to another before businessmen in Chicago at lunch, and spark an evening rally in Los Angeles; to pay for pollsters and advisers; and to buy the television time needed “to get the message out”. This year, the money raising chore is more important than ever, since states providing a majority of delegates to the nominating conventions will hold primaries by early February 2008. It is one thing to campaign by knocking on doors in small states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, but it is quite another to get the message out simultaneously in Florida, California, New York, Michigan and other populous states.

Funding a campaign
The need for about $10m per month to finance a primary campaign has policy implications. Hollywood is one source of large donations, and Hollywood leans left and is very green. So candidates wanting to tap into movie money must be for a generous welfare state and live in fear of global warming. Think, as one example, of Hollywood luvvie Al Gore.

Another money fountain is Wall Street, with its belief in generous tax treatment of capital gains, and taxes on dividends and inheritances. Since most Republican candidates share that belief, they can count on support from New York’s investment banks – except for those who are impressed with the intelligence and competence of Senator Hillary Clinton.

So much for money and its relation to policy. More important is the nature of the nominating process. As is the case in many countries, it is the parties’ activists who provide the candidates with their handbill – distributing foot soldiers, and who turn out to vote in these early polls. Therein lies a problem for the candidates. These activists are true believers, not open to discussion of their political positions.

For the Republicans, that means a primary electorate to the right of most voters; for Democrats, that means an electorate far to the left of the more numerous moderate voters. In policy terms, this means that the gaggle of Republicans vying for the favour of the party’s base have to, or believe they have to, oppose abortion and tax increases; favour shrinking the size of government and the appointment of judges who will stay close to the original intent of the Constitution; and oppose efforts to withdraw from Iraq before something that can be called victory is secured.

Democrat wannabes, on the other hand, have to favour a more-or-less immediate withdrawal from Iraq; higher taxes on the wealthy; support trade union protectionist policies, and expanded entitlement programmes such as universal healthcare; and promise to nominate judges who will broadly interpret legislation to expand unconstrained abortion ‘rights’ (the ‘right to choose’, in American political jargon), and the rights of accused terrorists.

Policy surprises
Which creates a problem for all of the candidates. To the extent that they attract the votes they need to get the nomination, they alienate the larger number of voters whose support they need to win the general election. So the usual procedure in America is for the candidates, the nomination secured, to begin to move to the centre. And when elected, having run right or left, to govern closer to the centre, inevitably disappointing the true believers without whose support they would never have sat in the Oval Office in the first place. That’s why Bill Clinton’s leftish supporters, his wife included, were disappointed when he signed on to a comprehensive programme of welfare reform that forced millions off the dole and into the workforce. And that’s why George W Bush’s rightish, small government supporters have been enraged at his expansion of the federal government at a more rapid rate than any president since Lyndon Johnson initiated his ‘Great Society’ programme. Clinton voters never imagined that he would force poor, single mothers into work, and Bush backers had no hint that he would push through a prescription drug programme that would add billions to government spending.

All of which makes it more than a little difficult to predict the directions American policy will take in the days, soon to come, when Bush will be free to spend more time reminiscing with his old friend Tony Blair over what they accomplished and, more poignantly, what might have been. My guess is that as they sit on the porch at Bush’s Texas ranch, or on the veranda of one of the posh resorts preferred by the Blairs, they will survey an America that has made several important decisions.