Part 1: Immigration

In an immigrant nation, where nearly every family's history is rooted abroad, the oldest and sometimes most heated topic in domestic politics is the influx of newcomers over the border. In contrast to America's earlier immigrants, though, the latest arrivals aren't from Europe, but from Central- and South America. Spanish is the native language for nearly half of America's 37.5 million immigrants, a third of whom come from Mexico. Many American companies depend on the illegal, unregistered ones for cheap labor. But in an age of terrorism, the rush of unregistered foreigners is seen as a security threat.

Around 12 million immigrants are in the US illegally. No one in Washington agrees on how to deal with the problem. Massive immigration reform -- President George W. Bush's pet project -- failed against opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress. The problem has touched the furthest reaches of the country. Latinos have become America's largest minority, and many of the immigrants don't just settle in the southern states. They also migrate to the Midwest -- to states like Iowa. In 1990, the number of Latinos in Iowa numbered 23,000. Today there are 113,000. Every fifth citizen in Iowa thinks that immigration is an "important question" in this primary.

It's no wonder that all the candidates, Democrat or Republican, try to sound firm on this issue. Democrats talk about tougher measures for employers who hire illegal immigrants, and about mandatory English lessons. Barack Obama supports a guest worker program. Hilary Clinton doesn't -- but both want to build a fence along the Mexican border.

Clinton and Obama have tangled over the issue of whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to obtain drivers' licenses. Is it a matter of public safety, or an illegitimate first step to securing permanent residence?

But the Republicans squabble loudest over immigration. Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani and Mike Huckabee all accuse each other of tolerating or even encouraging illegal immigrants -- either as gardeners at their estates (Romney), as "citizens" in the melting pot of New York City (Giuliani), or as schoolchildren in Arkansas (Huckabee).

The most drastic solution -- a fence around the United States that would keep illegal immigrants out and give them no chance of naturalization -- is presented by Congressman Tom Tancredo. He has since removed himself from the ballot but nonetheless made his mark on the race.

Economy

In spite of the credit and real-estate crises that demoralized Wall Street this year, the US economic situation has remained relatively stable. Experts, though, have warned of a recession in 2008 if the mortgage drama broadens (which many of them expect). Wages in the previous year have barely risen; in fact, adjusting for inflation, US workers are earning one percent less than they did in 2001, while the salaries of top managers have climbed sharply. About 36.5 million Americans live in poverty, and 45 million -- including almost nine million children -- are uninsured.

This widening income gap is reflected in poll results. Only 28 percent of Americans call the current economic situation "excellent" or "good," while 56 percent are counting on a recession in 2008. "The economic mood is bleaker than at any time since 1992," reports Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. Kohut remembers how Bill Clinton won the presidency that year with the motto, "It's the economy, stupid!" This year the economy is also at the top of the list of voters' concerns. Fears about globalization and its consequences are also playing a subliminal role.

Most candidates, but in particular Republicans, boil the economic debate down to buzzwords like "taxes" and "deficit." The Republicans have offered various and sometimes quite elaborate plans that all lead to a single result: a magic combination of lower taxes (through a consolidation of Bush's tax cuts) with lower federal deficits.

Mike Huckabee, in fact, wants to do away with income tax altogether and replace it with a European-style value-added tax (a national sales tax) -- which his supporters refer to by the euphemism "FairTax." The Democrats, on the other hand -- who like to present themselves as Robin Hoods for the middle class -- are united on this issue. They want to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, and broaden the cuts for citizens with lower incomes. Barack Obama and John Edwards have made the most noise about fighting poverty.

Environment and Energy

Climate protection became a campaign issue, at the very latest, when Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize. Even the Bush administration deigned to admit that global warming was real. While some state governments have been far ahead of Washington on climate protection, the White House has continued to resist the Kyoto Protocol as well as mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. At first the administration seemed to agree with a climate compromise at Bali, but later distanced itself.

Meanwhile, Congress has largely freed itself from the White House's position and started to draw up new laws to curb emissions.

All candidates act like eco-knights. Buzzwords like "ethanol" and "bio-diesel" belong to every campaigner's vocabulary -- above all in a corn-growing state like Iowa. Democrats want to make climate protection a government mission; they've promised to legislate drastically lower CO2 emissions and to raise fines against greenhouse-gas polluters. But there are also a number of independent ideas, like billion-dollar programs for climate research (Edwards, Joe Biden), drastic reductions in oil imports (Clinton), $150 billion in government money for alternative energy sources (Obama). John Edwards has hit the hardest on punishing eco-sinners, in particular big oil companies.

The picture among Republicans is more diffuse. As a rule they want to leave business with a freer hand. Giuliani, for example, has argued for a voluntary "market-oriented solution," while Romney thinks other countries ought to be bound to similar restrictions as the United States. Most Republicans support more nuclear power.

One of their favorite demands has driven away all environmentalists -- the idea of more drilling on US territory to reduce dependence on foreign oil. Alone among Republicans, John McCain talks about the dangers of climate change (often in the context of national defense), and argues for an up-to-date American energy policy.

Foreign Policy

Richard Holbrooke, former US chief negotiator in Kosovo and Hillary Clinton's current foreign policy advisor, appeared last April at the Brussels Forum. The moderator of the annual trans-Atlantic strategy conference asked him why foreign policy never plays much of a role in the US election campaign -- but Holbrooke didn't agree with this thesis at all, countering that in many US elections "foreign policy was the number one issue." And he is certain this year it will be decisive: "In 2008 it will be the key issue."

Foreign policy is indeed playing a vital role in the current election campaign -- though it is less about concrete policies than a question of the suitability of the man (or woman) who will next occupy the White House.

"US voters regard foreign policy above all as a leadership question," says Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center. The president doesn't have to have a lot of foreign policy experience. Neither Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush could lay claim to any vast foreign policy experience. "That doesn't necessarily worry Americans," Dimock says. "A candidate's character is more important. How he presents America to the world."

This is most apparent among the Democrats. Hillary Clinton likes to emphasize her experience of having lived for eight years in the White House hosting international leaders -- and promises a return to the foreign policy stability of her husband's presidency. It was with this in mind that she gave her interpretation of the latest crisis in Pakistan that followed the murder of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. She insisted that the assassination shows that at any moment the person in the White House may have to deal with a big crisis. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has emphasized that it was precisely the old ways of thinking about foreign policy that led to this crisis. He says it is now time to "turn the page."

The Republicans, for their part, have done their best to distance themselves from George W. Bush. But they have held back from sharply attacking his foreign policy. Rudy Giuliani says he wants to continue tackling terrorism aggressively. He has built his candidacy on the widespread public perception that he performed well as New York mayor after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mitt Romney has one-upped him by saying he wants "two Guantanamos." The most critical of the current administration has been Mike Huckabee, who is doing surprisingly well in the polls in Iowa. The former governor of Arkansas, who has hardly any experience in foreign policy, has slammed the Bush administration's "bunker mentality," and demanded a more flexible approach to Iran.

The "National Intelligence Report" on Iran shifted the foreign policy debate within both parties. For months Iran -- and the atomic weapons programmed it was widely presumed they were pursuing -- had been the most important issue when it came to foreign policy. The Republicans had already managed to present a united front on the issue and they are now warning against interpreting the new information as a carte blanche for Iran.

The Republicans have also tried to characterize the Democrats as "weak" when it comes to foreign policy. Hillary Clinton has tried to counter this image, by voting for harsh sanctions against Iran and always emphasizing the military option. But this allowed her Democratic rivals to attack her stance after the publication of the intelligence report.

All of the Democratic candidates have said they want the troops out of Iraq and an end to the war. Clinton, however, has had to fight off attacks from John Edwards -- who has accused her of wanting to keep troops there. Among the Republicans, it is Sen. John McCain who has most strongly backed Bush's "surge" strategy in Iraq, which saw an increased number of US troops sent there in an effort to improve security. That position has paid off, and incremental improvements in Iraq have led to similar improvements in McCain's poll numbers.

However, McCain has also distanced himself from the Bush Administration's tactics in the war on terror. In particular, he has pledged that if he were elected president, torture would not be tolerated under any circumstances.

Europe has played hardly any role whatsoever in the campaign so far. And most Europeans have lost the hope that the frosty trans-Atlantic relations will change with a new president in the White House. In the latest "Transatlantic Trends," by the German Marshall Funds, almost half of Europeans and around 40 percent of Americans don't think Bush's departure will do much to improve relations.

Health Care

In surveys, US managers point to health care and its immense cost in the US as the largest hurdle to competitiveness in the global market. Many American voters likewise see it as an important issue -- to many it's the most critical issue in the 2008 campaign.

When the marriage between Daimler and Chrysler finally ended in August 2007 after nine stormy years, the losses absorbed by Daimler were not insignificant. German analysts, though, were ecstatic. From one moment to the next, Daimler had freed itself from having to pay into the Chrysler health care and pension schemes -- a sum estimated by some analysts to be as high as $13 billion.

That something must give is clear from the statistics: The American health care system is the most expensive in the world. US per-capita spending on health care is almost double that of most European countries. The result is a nation with some of the best medical care available anywhere -- but plenty of shortcomings. The number of Americans without health insurance continues to climb and now totals some 45 million people. Thirty-seven percent of Americans, according to a recent survey carried out by the Commonwealth Fund, didn't visit a doctor or skimped on treatment last year partly because of the cost.

At the same time, a majority of Americans say they don't want a nationalized health system on the European model. Democrats have been open about wanting the state to play a greater role in the US health care system, but have been careful to avoid comparisons between their plans and those in the US. Hillary Clinton -- who headed up the effort to introduce universal health care during her husband Bill's first term in office -- would like to guarantee health insurance for all US citizens.

Her plan differs from Barack Obama's primarily in that he does not want to make health insurance mandatory. He has said he doesn't think there should be a penalty levied against those who don't buy insurance: "What I have said repeatedly is the reason people don't have health insurance isn't because they don't want it, it's because they can't afford it."

Health experts are far from unanimous as to whether Obama's plan would work. Many have said that without a requirement clause, many would only join such a plan when they need it. John Edwards has been using the most radical rhetoric, saying he wants to limit the influence of big pharmaceutical companies and doctors' lobbies. As a lawyer, Edwards took a number of cases against the pharmaceutical industry to court.

When it comes to the Republicans, Mitt Romney is the candidate with perhaps the best health care credentials, due to his having passed a major medical reform bill while governor of Massachusetts. But the conservative Republican base has an allergic reaction to anything that smells of state coverage. Romney has thus promised to make health care available to all Americans, but has likewise said he wants to keep the role of the government to a minimum.

Republican competitor Rudy Giuliani wants to see a solution to the problem anchored solidly in private industry. "When you hear Democrats in particular talk about single-mandated health care, universal health care, what they're talking about is socialized medicine." Some, though, think that there are positive elements in both approaches. Ron Wyden, an influential Democratic Senator from Oregon, says a compromise could be reached between the two parties. "I think Democrats are right about making sure that everybody gets covered and Republicans are right about promoting personal responsibility and more personal involvement in making health care choices," he says.

Gun Control

In these last feverish days of the Iowa campaign, Mike Huckabee went pheasant hunting. He held up his big shotgun for the cameras. That's a key message in conservative rural Iowa, where voters attach a lot of importance to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution -- the right to bear arms.