EURSOC
The Great Escape
By EURSOC Two
17 August, 2005
What a difference a fortnight makes! Just before departing on our summer holidays, EURSOC crowed that Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schröder was politically doomed, and that opposition leader Angela Merkel merely needed to show up to win September's election.
Now it emerges that things aren't quite going to plan. A series of gaffes by opposition colleagues have severely dented Christian Democrat support in eastern Germany. Disaffected voters have swung to the radical Left Party, a grouping of disgruntled refugees from Schröder's party and former communist diehards. On a personal level, Merkel's lack of gloss comes across as mere lack of charisma, while her strategy of playing policy cards close to her chest looks like a studied refusal to say anything that might affect her approval ratings.
Not that this has done much good. While her party still retains a healthy lead over Schröder's Social Democrats, that lead has plunged from 21 points in June to just 14 today. Still more than Tony Blair's lead over Britain's opposition as the UK election approached in May, but with a month to go to the polls, there is a sinking feeling among opposition supporters that Merkel's star is fading.
Another Schröder win may be some distance off - his party's ratings have not exactly soared, up a measly two percent from June - but talk of coalitions, dismissed as far-fetched before the summer, has broken into the open. A recent poll indicated that Merkel's CDU with its partners the Bavarian Christians (CSU) and Free Democrats might not be able to win enough seats to form a government alone. Voters would prefer a "Grand Coalition" of Schröder's SPD, Merkel's CDU and the CSU.
With personal approval ratings among voters higher than Merkel's, Schröder might be persuaded to lead Germany for another few years.
The chancellor has played cool in his election campaign, preferring to allow the opposition to tangle itself in difficulties rather than detail his own policies (clue: he has none). In contrast to Merkel's floundering, Schröder has appeared confident and assured in election meetings.
He broke his silence last Saturday however with the cheapest shot of the election to date. Responding to US president Bush's refusal to rule out military action against Iran, Schröder demanded that "military action should be taken off the table" in negotiations to prevent the theofascist state developing nuclear weapons.
The following day he wrote a column in Germany's highest-circulation newspaper describing military action as "extremely dangerous" and adding that his government would never participate in any such acts against Iran.
Schröder's posturing will remind voters of his opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Back in 2002, the chancellor looked set to face a battering at the ballot boxes. His anti-US, anti-war stance then helped edge the election for him: As Angela Merkel has promised friendlier relations with the US, Schröder's remarks seem designed to force his rival into the uncomfortable role of US apologist. Merkel has made clear that her affection for the US does not extend to assisting in an assault on Iran - though it could be argued that if Germany's voters are swayed by Schröder's act a second time, perhaps they deserve another term of the same.
It goes without saying that another term for Schröder would be disastrous for Germany and Europe. In 2002 he faced defeat for failing to pull the economy out of a slump: Three years later, pretty much every economic indicator, and not least unemployment figures, demonstrates that things have got worse under this chancellor.
He has lacked the courage to face down opponents of reform in his own party, and failed to take the opportunity to persuade voters of the need to make painful changes. He has conspired with his ally Jacques Chirac to stall reform at a European level and given in too easily to the protectionist instincts of his French colleague. Rather than celebrate Germany's unique and enviable position as the crossroads of western and eastern Europe and exploit the economic and political opportunities this presents, he has allowed Germany to be drawn deeper into Paris-led visions of an exclusive, "social Europe" shut off from economic realities. Berlin should be the centre of alliances stretching from the Baltics to the Alps, from the prosperous west to the fast-rising east: Under Schröder, all this potential has been eschewed in favour of a single, jealously defended axis with Paris.
Schröder does not deserve another victory - but Angela Merkel has not yet convinced Germans that she deserves to replace him. |
