NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN nor heat nor gloom of a hurricane can keep me away from a press breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton. And so it was, on the morning of the day Hurricane Isabel was poised to strike our nation’s capital, that I found myself alone in an oak-paneled room waiting to meet Wolfgang Schäuble, the deputy chairman of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union parliamentary group (he isn’t nearly as boring as his title sounds). In the 1980s, Schäuble served as chief of staff for Helmut Kohl. Later, as interior minister, he was one of the key architects of reunification, arguing for the transfer of the capital from Bonn to Berlin. From 1998 to 2000, he was chairman of the Christian Democratic party. (During a campaign rally in 1990, a deranged man fired two shots into Schäuble, paralyzing him from the waist down. To this day he is confined to a wheelchair.)