After a little research, it would be easy to mistake Hillary Rodham Clinton, the US presidential frontrunner for the opposition liberal Democratic Party, for a closet member of President George W. Bush's conservative Republicans. Delving deeper, another perception is revealed: America's proudly democratic system of government is much like the not-so-free one in Hong Kong. Senator Clinton is undeniably the most right-leaning of the Democrat's candidates for the November vote next year. Her backing of the war in Iraq in 2002, support of a national identity card and calls for tight controls on immigration put her squarely in agreement with the Republicans. In CNN's YouTube question-and-answer session with the Democratic presidential hopefuls on Monday, she showed that she also shares Republican thinking on foreign policy. Asked if, during her first year as president, she would be willing to meet without preconditions the presidents and dictators of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, she promised diplomacy, but refused leader-to-leader contact. Her main challenger for the nomination, Barack Obama, took the traditional party line of pledging to use every tool at his disposal. Senator Clinton may be the wife of Mr Bush's predecessor - the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. But the fact she is closer to the centre of the political spectrum than the left is a good thing; there is no better way to win over the Republican states that will be necessary to take the presidency than appealing to their values. Whether she is doing this consciously, or is truly a conservative, is another matter. Her roots would tend towards the latter. Born into a conservative family in a middle-class Chicago suburb, at 16 she volunteered for the 1964 presidential campaign of Republican icon Barry Goldwater. He lost, but that did not dampen her enthusiasm: as an undergraduate at Wellesley College, she served as the president of the campus' chapter of the Young Republicans. Her concern with civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam war put her closer to the liberal wing of the Republicans and eventually led to membership of the Democratic Party. Of the years during which she changed political allegiances, she has said: 'I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat, but I think my underlying values have remained pretty constant: individual responsibility and community. I don't see those as being mutually inconsistent.' Then, there is the closeness of the Clintons and parents of Mr Bush, who have holidayed together since the late 1980s, when Mr Bush Snr was president and Mr Clinton a governor. Mr Clinton told the CBS television network in 2005 that he viewed the Bushes as a surrogate family and that the elder Bush's wife, Barbara, referred to him as 'son'. This points to the Clintons and Bushes being political soulmates. How else can it be explained why Bush supporters are now actively working for Senator Clinton's presidential campaign? A report in the Financial Times on July 15, stated: 'John Mack, Morgan Stanley's chief executive, is to invite senior staff to a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton on Monday in a pointed endorsement of the Democratic presidential hopeful from an important backer of President George W. Bush in 2004.' This follows the conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, also a Bush presidential campaign backer, deciding to support Senator Clinton. His approval came despite his New York Post newspaper savaging her successful 2000 bid to become a senator for New York state. Herein lies the truth of American politics, and why it is so similar to what goes on in Hong Kong. There is no left or right in politics any more - not in the US or anywhere else. Politics is all about big business - which, by its nature of wanting to keep the status quo so the money keeps rolling in, is conservative by nature. To keep maximum stability, corporations fund politicians' campaigns, in return for policy promises. People like the Clintons and the Bushes know exactly what they have to do to satisfy the demands of big business. In such circumstances, whether Senator Clinton is acting like a Democrat or a Republican becomes irrelevant. Peter Kammerer is the Post's foreign editor
