HERE ARE A FEW THOUGHTS to ponder regarding Germany’s descent into political kaos:
AT WHAT POINT did Chancellor Gerhard Schröder deem that moving up elections by a year to this September would increase his chances of winning? After all, the process of moving up national elections is not that easy. First Schröder needs to call for a vote of confidence within the Bundestag. He needs to lose this vote, thereby resulting in the dissolution of his Social Democratic/Green coalition government–and thus the need for a new election. If the opposition Christian Democrats controlled parliament, this would be easy. But Schröder’s party currently holds a seven-seat advantage–meaning he needs eight of his colleagues to vote against him. Still following? While it normally shouldn’t be a problem for the chancellor to have his loyal supporters do his bidding, there is some speculation that for the younger members of his party, the last thing they would want is to dissolve the government and along with it, quite possibly, their pensions. So then what?
The chancellor could reach across the aisle to the Christian Democrats and try to form a grand coalition government. But if the CDU rejects this, could that possibly mean that Schröder remains in power until 2006? And what if German president Horst Köhler or the high court decides the entire affair to be unconstitutional? A poll question on the Frankfurter Allgemeine online edition asks, “Where should the government go from here?” Less than 8 percent favor a grand coalition. Only about 10 percent believe Schröder should remain in office until next year. Surprisingly, only 26 percent desire a vote of confidence. And more than 55 percent of respondents think Gerhard Schröder should resign immediately. A June 3 Infratest dimap poll indicates only 28 percent of voters would now choose the Social Democrats, while close to 48 percent would support the opposition Christian Democrats.
Either way it seems the chancellor is doomed. “Only an invasion of Iran by George W. Bush could save Schröder,” jokes Matthias Rüb, political correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine. I asked one senior German diplomat what he thought about the state of the elections. “You mean if there is an election?” he quipped. But seriously, he added, “At the moment, [the Christian Democrats] are the winners, when you look at the polls. But wait and see. Ask me in August. Not that I am being an optimist.”
THERE HAVE BEEN COMPARISONS made by some in the media between the Christian Democratic candidate for chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Margaret Thatcher. That would be misleading. As Torsten Krauel of Die Welt points out, “Mrs. Thatcher looked to the past to restore Great Britain’s greatness, and she embarked on a very confrontational course to achieve that goal. Mrs. Merkel, on the other hand, does not feel inclined to make Germany a great power.” Professor Michael Werz of the German Marshall Fund of the United States calls the comparison “an unrealistic assessment” and notes that “the CDU has a very strong social Catholic tradition. . . . With an increasingly aging constituency, you are not really likely to be a revolutionary party–you are very likely to be a party that preserves the status quo as much as possible.”
Josef Joffe, editor and publisher of Die Zeit agrees, having written in the Financial Times last month: “In the 1980s, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. led conservative parties that were in fact revolutionary. They broke the mold and triggered sustained growth. They went after the labor unions and mesmerized their nations with the ringing rhetoric of salvation. Continental conservatives, whether in France, Germany, or Italy, are like the Tories of yesteryear–more Disraeli than Thatcher. They are statist and for the status quo.” One of Michael Werz’s concerns is that the Christian Democrats be willing to embrace diversity, “not only accepting minorities and helping them make their way through society, but also being conscious about the necessity of organizing middle class immigration into Germany. . . . Sometimes people in Germany are tempted to give 19th century answers to 21st century questions.”
Angela Merkel may be no Margaret Thatcher, but she can certainly be ruthless when she needs to be. As former members of the Kohl government and other German experts have pointed out to me, during Merkel’s climb to power in the 1990s, whenever someone stood in her way (such as former CDU chairmen Wolfgang Schäuble and Friedrich Merz), he ultimately got pushed aside. Another Merkel rival, former Kohl defense minister Volker Rühe, ended up becoming Schröder’s special envoy for U.N. reform. When I asked Rühe about Merkel’s prospects, he was rather tepid, only saying “a chancellor usually serves eight years, then people want a change.” Reason enough, I guess.
SCENE AND HEARD: According to sources, one of the possible candidates to replace the non-German-speaking U.S. ambassador to Germany, Dan Coats, is another supposedly non-German speaker by the name of W.R. “Tim” Timken Jr. of Ohio. Timken is chairman of the board of the Timken Company, maker of (according to its website) “bearings, alloy steels, and related products and services.” He is also a member of the U.S.-Japan Business Council and a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. So wouldn’t he be the ideal candidate for ambassador to France or Japan? (Incidentally, Timken is also a director of Diebold, Inc.)
Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard and a contributor to the blog Galley Slaves.
