Is Gerhard Schöder a Better Magician than David Copperfield?
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is up to his old magic. From an election disaster, he is conjuring a miracle. Polls only show his Social Democrats six percentage points behind their conservative challengers. His trick this time? The skewering of Paul Kirchhof.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is pulling a Bill Clinton. Or at least he's stealing the "Comeback Kid's" nickname from under him. Perhaps it's only fair -- after all, during last week's chancellor debate, his challenger, Angela Merkel, ripped part of her closing speech off from Ronald Reagan. So now its Gerd's turn, and he's powering full steam ahead.
A few months ago, Schröder's party's chances at the polls on September 18th looked bleak. Now, his Social Democratic Party only trails the conservative Christian Democratic challengers by 6 percent. How did he do it?
A simple twist of the tongue. He threatened what he knows his voters most care about -- their security. In other words, he's made Germans more afraid of the social reforms the CDU/CSU might initiate than the ones he and his Green Party partners already have pushed through. His main thrashing victim is Paul Kirchhof, a business maven and academic who Merkel has nabbed as her probable future finance minister. Schröder is so disdainful of Kirchhof and his idea of imposing a 25 percent flat tax on everyone that he refuses to utter Kirchhof's name in public. When forced, the chancellor refers to Kirchhof as "that professor from Heidelberg." It's a rhetorical stroke of genius, instantly signalling how detached Kirchhof is from the needs of the everyday German voter. And it seems to be working. The most recent polls show the CDU/CSU with 40.5 percent, the SPD with 34.5 percent, the newly-formed Left Party with 8 percent the Greens with 7 percent and the FDP with 7 percent.
With popular opinion turning against Kirchhof, Merkel, too, has begun to back away. Cetainly, she's stopped hailing him as a "visionary" as she did just 10 days ago. The pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), which hopes to form a coalition government with the CDU/CSU, too, is distancing themselves. In fact, at their party conference on Sunday, the FDP said it will only enter into a coalition with the CDU/CSU if it offers net tax breaks for most citizens, but especially for families. Internally, FDP leader Guido Westerwelle has also begun criticize what he calls the overly hasty selection of Kirchhof and -- astonishingly -- even to question whether the CDU/CSU can win the election at all. Merkel is trying to shore up the damage by insisting that Kirchhof's "vision" is not entirely hers, and that she favors simplifying Germany's tax code into three tax brackets. To top it off, everyone from all parties, too, seems to be warning of the danger of being forced to form a Grand Coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD.
The most outrageous editorial of the day comes from the reliably witty editors at the left-leaning Die Tageszeitung, who put a large photo of the vampire Nosferatu (from the 1922 German horror flick) on their cover under the headline "Kirchhof, a symphony of horror." The paper then goes on to trace Germany's potential nightmare as a horror film starring Kirchhof as "Merkel's secret weapon." The dark lord would impose his "bleak, secretive flat tax", deliver his "list of cuts in the dark hours of the night" and offer a retirement plan that "sucks the blood from the veins" of the elderly, the paper opines, to organ music. Finally it asks, "Is Kirchhof the angel of death" for the conservatives?
The Financial Times Deutschland too offers up some heavy-duty opinion, using a full page editorial to endorse a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition government. Clearly, says the paper, Germany's biggest problem is its stagnant job market. Although the paper originally supported Schröder's reform plan (known as Agenda 2010), now, it says, "we no longer believe in the party" or that Schröder can give the nation the strong reform package it needs to boost its growth and economy. "Among all the options, we hold a black-yellow (CDU/CSU/FDP) coalition for the best. The Financial Times Deutschland pleads for a regime change. And as such clearly supports the Union and the FDP." On an individual basis, the paper says, it supports voting for the FDP, despite the weakness of its leader, Westerwelle. Despite all the risks involved, the paper says it believes a CDU/CSU/FDP coalition offers the best possibility to stay on the reform course Germany has started. Merkel is doing a good job for her party, the paper says. "But, we also think that she can only push through her neo-liberal politics with a strong FDP at her side. That's why we are lending our vote to the FDP on Sept. 18."
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung is more even-handed, but still blunt in its assessment of the Kirchhof fiasco. "When Merkel appointed Kirchhof to her competence team, Westerwelle jubilantly described him as an "ally in spirit." But things sounded a bit different at the FDP party conference on Sunday." At that point, the paper says, Westerwelle "didn't even want to speak the professor's name." And it says, "the suppression of Kirchhof within CDU/CSU is even more dramatic." Now, Kirchhof's future appointment as finance minister is no longer certain. "Kirchhof is being turned from a crowd-winner into an uninvited guest. Kirchhof? Who's Kirchhof? This is a breath-taking piece of theatre and the craziest part about it is that it's the opponent (Schröder) who is the director. ...Without any restraint, he is painting a picture of the 'professor from Heidelberg' as the devil of the unjust, anti-social, reactionary state." And the CDU/CSU is not attacking back. In fact, says the paper, "The only thing that CDU/CSU can think to do is distance itself from him (Kirchhof)." But, if the conservatives really want to lead, Merkel needs to not only find her own vision, she also needs to "find a better answer."
Germany's paper of record, the Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, hails Schöder as an uncanny "political illusionist." Not even David Copperfield, who made a train disappear from the stage, is as good as Gerd, the paper says. After all, Schröder has made "the contours of 5 million unemployed disappear in the fog of the election campaign." Schöder's real trick, however, "is to divert the public's attention elsewhere. Schöeder is a master at this." As he did in 2002, when floods overwhelmed East Germany, Schöder is portraying himself as "the savior" of his nation. He is making the "professor from Heidelberg appear as a mad scientist, a social demon who would like nothing more than to put his guinea pigs, the Germans, into deep freeze." In sum, he has managed to make it look like the CDU/CSU and Kirchhof have a plan that will make Germany poorer. "It seems that there are quite a few people who believe this," the paper laments. "Schröder and (Green Party partner Joschka) Fischer are pursuing a campaign of fear." And, sadly, it says, the German people's fear of further cuts in social benefits is obviously so acute that they seem to have forgotten that this election was meant to be a plebiscite on Schröder's own unpopular reform policies.
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