Bundesbog

is visiting Germany through the generosity of the Atlantik-Brucke. In more ways than one, Gerhard Schroder is the largest politician in Germany. I learn this Sunday night at the election party of his Social Democrats (SPD). Europe's most audacious leader has just finished his second "victory" speech of the evening. He and his entourage barrel toward me, a cyclone of movement that zigzags toward the outstretched hands of supporters and leaves a trail of upended furniture and crashing beer glasses in its wake. In omnipresent campaign posters dotting Berlin's streets, the chancellor's face is stern and unsmiling, a stark contrast to the strained and awkward grin on the signs of his opponent, Angela Merkel of the Christian Democrats (CDU). But tonight, as Schroder approaches, forcing me back against a small table that topples over, he is a massive swirl of back-slaps, belly laughs, and smiles. One would never know that he just lost an election.Schroder's election night show of confidence--a last-ditch effort to hold onto the chancellorship that seems almost certain to fail--was a fitting bookend to a campaign that he started last spring with a similar act of bravado. In May, Merkel's CDU took control of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a SPD stronghold for 39 years. The CDU's sudden strength left Schroder shaken. Rather than waiting for the national elections scheduled for 2006, he called for an early vote, betting he could catch his CDU opponents divided and unprepared. In many ways, he was right. The divisions within the CDU are a major reason for Merkel's ineffective campaign. Once ahead by almost 20 points and confident of a sweeping victory, Merkel lost her lead over the previous month. But, in the end, Schroder failed to win a plurality and threw the German electoral system into chaos. Many German analysts shake their head at his tactics. They have a word for the brand of brash and narcissistic politics that has led the country to electoral gridlock: American. Sunday night in Berlin was like November 7, 2000, in Nashville or Austin. What was supposed to be the end of a grueling campaign turned out to be the beginning of a new one. The CDU ended the evening with 35 percent of the vote to the SPD's 34 percent. Merkel's coalition partners on the right, the Free Democrats (FDP), won a surprisingly strong 10 percent, but not enough to form a right-of-center coalition that would make Merkel chancellor and provide a mandate for the economic reforms she championed during the campaign. The new campaign in Germany, a scramble between five parties to cobble together a majority coalition, is Byzantine and the outcome difficult to predict. But it's not hard to explain how Schroder forced a near electoral draw. He did it by Americanizing German politics. "The guy who campaigned against the United States," says Roland Werner, the spokesman for the libertarian- oriented Free Democrats, "has become more American than any other politician in Germany." First, since both his party and his platform were unpopular, Schroder personalized the race. "People may not like his plan and may not like his policies, but they like him," noted a senior American diplomat stationed in Frankfurt. American-style attack ads and celebrity political consultants haven't yet taken root, but German reporters and politicians gripe that Schroder has helped make campaigns more superficial and media-centric. Merkel's hair and makeup were briefly an issue. Sweat stains on her dress were discussed on chat shows. The turning point of the campaign was a one-on-one TV debate between Merkel and Schroder. Most often, an incumbent ducks such forums, but Schroder approached it with relish. Merkel, a scientist from the east, looked uncertain, while Schroder seemed commanding. "He wasn't necessarily the intellectual winner, but he exuded confidence and charisma," says Rafael Seligmann, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Times, an Englishlanguage newspaper published in Germany. Aside from her less-than-polished media persona, Merkel made fundamental campaign mistakes that Schroder masterfully exploited. Walter Mondale-style, she tried to make a virtue of a platform that demanded sacrifice from Germans. "This is not a very enthusiastic campaign," said one top party official. "Our message is that nobody likes to visit the doctor but, when you know it is necessary to go, you have to do it." Merkel offered bitter medicine: a raise in Germany's value-added tax. It was also an odd theme for the conservative CDU. "For seven years, they have been in the opposition talking about cutting taxes, and then their platform gets reduced to a tax increase," says the FDP's Werner, shaking his head in frustration. Merkel's message got even more confusing when she named Paul Kirchhof, an academic and a vigorous proponent of a flat tax, as her future finance minister. Overnight, she went from a tax-raiser to an anti-tax radical. Schroder hammered away at Kirchhof, turning him into a symbol of CDU radicalism. When Merkel tried to distance herself from her own adviser, she only reinforced a sense of weakness and vacillation, and Schroder's attacks steadily chipped away at her double-digit lead. " Schroder is the best campaigner in Europe," says Roland Koch, the CDU governor of the state of Hesse and one of Merkel's chief party rivals. Despite protestations from many German political observers that Merkel's status as a professional woman without children was irrelevant, gender stereotypes did play a role in the campaign, and Merkel's gaffes did little to help her overcome them. Reporters joked about "Merkel's girls' camp," a dismissive term for her circle of female advisers. Some of the senior male officials in the CDU resent Merkel's speedy rise through the party, and they conspicuously sat on their hands during the campaign. At the FDP's election night party, Margarita Mathiopoulos, the party's foreign policy adviser, was apoplectic. "They tried to prohibit a woman from being chancellor, and they didn't campaign for her," she said of Merkel's male colleagues in the CDU. "That's why I'm really upset. This is a lesson for Hillary Clinton if she wants to run for president. Watch out! Merkel was killed by her own party." Now, as a weakened Merkel struggles to form a government, much of the political gossip in Berlin centers on which CDU members might stage a political coup against her. The leading contenders are Koch, a young, polished, pro- American politician; Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian governor who narrowly lost to Schroder in 2002; and Christian Wulff, the leader of the state of Lower Saxony. The question for them may be whether it is even a job worth having at the moment. One likely coalition scenario is that Merkel, or perhaps her CDU replacement, will create a so-called grand coalition with the SPD. But the prospects for progress under such an arrangement is slim. On the day after the election, CDU members in Berlin seemed to be moving away from the idea of a grand coalition with the SPD and toward what is referred to as the Jamaica coalition, named for the colors of that country's flag. The CDU, whose color is black, and the FDP, whose color is yellow, want to find a way to bring aboard the Greens, the party that has ruled in coalition with Schroder since 1998. Such a coalition sounds incomprehensible to American observers, but there is more consensus in German politics than its five political parties suggest. On foreign policy, for instance, all parties are against the Iraq war and in favor of the Kyoto Treaty and the International Criminal Court, three of the major issues that have split Germany from the United States in recent years. On domestic issues, the debate is over how and whether to trim the large welfare state but not whether it should exist. Analysts here argue that the Greens, who have learned to enjoy being in power over the last seven years, might be bought off if the CDU were to modify its pro-nuclear energy stance and perhaps softened its opposition to EU membership for Turkey. Other exotic coalitions are also being discussed, and nobody here really seems to know what the next government will look like or who will lead it. In the meantime, all the major issues that Germans were steeling themselves for-- Turkey's integration into Europe, Iran's nuclear program, relations with the United States, the German economy--still loom. Schroder hoped his audacious political gamble would lead to a new mandate. Instead, the election was bad for Schroder, bad for Merkel, and bad for Germany.

By ryan lizza