Schröder’s Last Gasp

Coverage of the general election in Germany in the US press has been poor and erratic.  Still, I have to say that the Washington Post has done a decent job in the past week.  Today, Craig Whitlock reports on a SPD campaign rally in Bremen, where Gerhard Schröder tries to generate enthusiasm for his party’s plan for the future.  But it is the past seven years of Red/Green actions and inactions that weigh heavily on his chances for Sunday. In particular, it is Schröder’s failed promise to cut unemployment that has doomed his chances this time:

The coalition did trim social benefits and cut some taxes to encourage companies to hire more workers, but the strategy has not panned out. Many of Germany’s biggest industrial companies remain profitable, but have shifted jobs to Eastern Europe and other regions where it is cheaper to operate.

"He really thought that curbing costs would improve the situation and reduce unemployment — he really believed that," said Michael Vester, a professor at the University of Hannover, in Schroeder’s home town. "But this was an error. It didn’t work."

In contrast, the New York Times has a lackluster piece on Angela Merkel and her campaign style.  By far, the best article on Merkel can be found in this week’s The New Yorker.  Jane Kramer’s piece "The Rise of Angela Merkel" (unfortunately not available online) provides some good context for understanding Merkel and her Wille zur Macht.  Kramer discusses how men have always dominated the CDU ( and not just the CDU), which makes Merkel’s political success all the more remarkable.  Here is something that I did not know about the CDU:

It is worth remembering that, twenty-six years ago, twelve of the most powerful men in the CDU today flew to South America on a working vacation and, while they were there, created a secret "networking group" )more accurately, a political cartel), the Andes Pact, from which women, intentionally or unintentionally, were excluded. The only exception was made in the past few years, when one of the members broke down and invited Merkel to a meeting. She went, but she was not asked back.

In the end, Kramer dismisses the notion that Angela Merkel is a transformational leader in the mold of Margaret Thatcher:

But she is not Germany’s Mrs. Thatcher, whatever her supporters say about two no-nonsense, up-by-their-bootstraps women scientists with sharp blue eyes and attitude. She has no really strong political ideas, and perhaps she is too cautious to risk the kind of analysis that might encourage her to have them.  In all likelihood, she will turn out to be a just a tougher, straighter version of the resourceful Gerhard Schröder – a Clinton-Blair who will steer her course somewhere between the punishing attrition in the United States and the bloated social costs that she, like Schröder before her, will inherit.

A Clinton without the sex and jazz?  A Blair without the eloquence and charisma?  The next six years promise to be pretty dull.