David Cameron need take no lessons from Barack Obama, but he might listen to Mitt Romney Cameron believes the past two decades of Anglo-American relations have been dominated by extremes: Blair growing too close to Bill Clinton, then over-compensating by sharing his Colgate with George W Bush. Brown's odd pursuit of Obama was summed up when he chased the President around the United Nations headquarters before pinning him down in the kitchen. Cameron's aim is for normality in relations to resume. To the Prime Minister, politics is primarily social: at home and abroad. When he met Obama for the first time four years ago, their opening words were caught on microphone. They were, from the outset, finishing each other's sentences and talking about lifestyles, not policies. Obama said he needs "big chunks of time during the day" just to think. Cameron moaned about aides who "chalk your diary up." Yes, said Obama, do too much work and "you start making mistakes. You lose the big picture. Or you lose..." ..."your feeling," interrupted Cameron. And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions. This is exactly what next week's summit is about: getting a better feel for each other. In fact, Cameron has reassuringly little to learn from Obama - aside from what happens when a leader promises change, then fails to deliver it. On school reform, the President has lost battle after battle with the teachers" unions, and the charter school movement has progressed relatively slowly under his administration. Cameron has won his battles with the unions (fought by Field Marshal Gove) and a third of state secondaries in Britain are now independently run. On Libya, it was the Prime Minister who had to put steel into the President's spine by arguing for a no-fly zone at a time when the Pentagon was rubbishing the idea. The biggest difference between them is on how to deal with a deficit. Obama has shunned the austerity agenda, leaving the Republicans to present themselves as the champions of fiscal sanity, while Cameron has claimed the austerity crown in Britain and has gained credibility as a result. The irony is that Cameron is increasing Britain's national debt far more than Obama is increasing America's - but he is doing it with élan, while talking endlessly about "tough decisions." Herein lies a simple lesson for the President: bang on about austerity for long enough and you can get away with almost anything. No one really checks the figures. In the Republican primary contest, meanwhile, the candidates have been very precise about debt. American conservatism is now defined by plans to tackle it, and the candidates compete on which taxes they'd cut to kick-start the economy, increase employment and balance the books. Romney's 59-point plan for growth is easily the most moderate, yet is still more radical and holistic than anything produced in Britain. He has ruled out tax rises, and pledged to cut state spending by 5 per cent on day one. Cameron, by contrast, is aiming for a 3.3 per cent cut over five years. It is easy to ridicule the American primaries, with their chanting activists and crowd-pleasing speeches. But this is what comes of having real crowds to please, as opposed to the lobbyists and pressure groups that dominate British party conferences. Amid the din of the Republican scrap, there are quite a few lessons to be learnt. The most valuable is a sense of urgency - a robust and inspiring refusal to accept a future of an America condemned to rising debt and relative decline. All Republicans seem to agree that now is no time to tinker: if the future looks bleak, then radical change is required. It is doubtful that any senior Tory will be at the Republican Convention in Florida. Personal links between the key players in the two parties are now almost non-existent. The Republican governors who do have a following in Tory high command, Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, are not running in this race. The feeling is that the Republicans are staging a battle of the B-Team, and the best man won't win because he's not in the race. British conservatism and American conservatism have seldom been further apart. And Cameron, for one, is shedding no tears about that.