Dr Kohl misses his chance
Neal Ascherson
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt is going to need all his officer-like qualities now. Sunday's election cut the coalition's majority to eight, made the opposition Christian Democrats the biggest party in the Bundestag, and by that change of balance made it far harder for the government to get Bills past the upper house (which the CDU now dominate). The Social Democrats must fear for the coalition. Their Free Democrat partners won't desert them now. But in a crisis, in two years' time?
The real question, looking at the results, is why the Christian Democrat-Christian Social Union opposition didn't win outright. The Social Democrats led the best government West Germany ever had, reforming at home and constructing the European truce abroad. But those achievements, under Willy Brandt as Chancellor and Walter Scheel of the Free Democrats as foreign minister, are long over now.
The Christian Democrats failed, even though they fired off all the missiles of modern European conservatism. They said that they stood for freedom against bureaucratic socialism. They pointed out a series of septic ' scandals associated with one-party SPD local government. They said that they would reduce wasteful public spending, which even SPD ministers concede has run out of control. They drew attention to the fact that, in spite of an inter-Germany treaty designed to produce 'change through intimacy', people are still being gunned down on the East German border. They sounded off on all possible occasions about the Russian menace and the armaments of the Warsaw Pact. They said that they would cut taxes and increase investment and protect the little man against the power of the great organised interest groups. And still they blew it. Mrs Thatcher—whose The Right Approach is uncannily similar to the CDU campaign—should lose some sleep.
It was a dull, dirty election. West Germany is still shaken by the after-effects of the world economic crisis. Compared to other countries in the West, the Federal Republic suffered lightly and recovered fast : 4 per cent inflation and 6 per cent growth are problems we should welcome. But unemployment at just over 4 percent, especially the sight of school-leavers without work, caused vast anxiety. The Social Democrat reform programme faded out, and ministers avoided talk about progress and change which might cost money. A really crass forecasting failure about a coming bulge of those reaching retirement suddenly endangered the financing of the whole state pension scheme. Both major parties fought an election campaign almost bereft of concrete programmes for the future, which ought to
have damaged the SPD severely—as the party associated with progress—but done the CDU no harm.
As nobody was making many promises about the future, the election was fought principally over the past, an area where conservatives should perform better. One leftwing SPD man told me: 'This is a contest between two conservative parties. One wants to get back into the 'sixties, and the other wants to get back into the'fift ies.'Anachronism got out of hand. The CDU, drunk with excitement over their 'Freedom instead of socialism' slogan, overdid things and went back to the timeless German conservative technique of suggesting that Social Democrats are really Bolsheviks with their beards shaved off. German electors like to have their flesh made to creep, but this was preposterous, and there was much evidence -especially in the Protestant regions of North Germany—that the waverers were repelled by CDU television spots in which SPD leaders were shown juxtaposed to hammers and sickles.
The question now is whether the government will last its four-year course to 1980.1n Great Britain, we have grown to regard an eight-seat majority as a possible basis for an administration. Things aren't so secure in West Germany. Members of the Bundestag suffer changes of heart. Or rather, as there is no nice way to put this, they get bought over. The Free Democrats, as junior coalition partners, are the trouble. Willy Brandt had problems of this kind over the grand drama of ratifying the Soviet and Polish treaties, when several FDP gentlement went off home, locked the door against journalists and sat drinking schnapps and balancing CDU cheques against their overdrafts. The Free Democrats are still a mixture: some who deserve their affiliation to the liberal international, and a few who are simply using the party list of a party sometimes pushed to find candidates as an escalator to the top.
The Constitution does not provide for byelections, and in fact it doesn't really provide for elections between four-year terms. The 1972 election—a year before it was due was simply an escape hatch carpentered up by the late President Heinemann to end a total impasse in the Bundestag. If the CDU manage to erode Helmut Schmidt's majority away, they would first try to evict him by the 'constructive vote of no confidence', which means that a Chancellorcan only be removed by the Bundestag if a majority for an alternative candidate can be found at the same time. This is what Rainer Barzel tried against Willy Brandt in 1972. He failed, which was lucky for civil peace as the German workers were beginning to come out in the streets against what they called a 'cold coup d'etal . Helmut Schmidt doesn't command that affection.
The Christian Democrats must now un' dertake some long-term thinking about their own future. Dr Helmut Kohl, the earnest and almost touchingly inexperienced prime minister of Rhineland-Palatinate who was their Chancellor-candidate, will probablY pay the penalty of failure. The party's prospects of winning in 1980, when the Social Democrats will have been in power for eleven years, look good. But the Chancellor after Schmidt is not likely to be Kohl. Nor will he be called Franz-Josef Strauss. The mighty Baval ian, at sixty-one, may have finally shot his bolt in federal politics, and many expect him to take on the post of Bavarian Prime Minister in the next few years. A new wave is breasting within the CDU: men like Kiep, the clever and rather liberal businessman who is currently off the central stage as finance minister in Lower Saxony, and Albrecht, his prime minister there at Hanover, and above all the busY little person who has managed the CDU for the last two campaigns. Professor Kurt Biedenkopf escaped the main odium for his party's narrow failure this time, which he probably foresaw, and there is no better bet than he fora future Chancellor. Helmut Schmidt, battered but savagelY happy with his victory, will go on trying t° govern. Although the electors were rot troubled with much of a choice of PO gramme, there are real problems facing West, Germany in the next few years. The social, services are suffering from a combination 01 wasteful expenditure and inadequate organ" isation. The rising value of the Mark, and the rising price of West German products in the outside world, seem slowly to be bringing a historic change in the whole emphasis of the economy, the beginnings of a move, away from an export-oriented industrial base to one more geared to internal con' sumption. If this process does develoP, We,s,t Germany's liberality to the outside Yvon', may correspondingly decline. The %yodel, trade conference at Nairobi in May showen how unexpectedly tough a Social Democrat government can get towards the P00re1 brethren in the world. Internally, such a change in industrial orientation is going t° produce some long-term unemployment anuspturut chteuareorvypthreescsouurentoryn. the loosely federal Opinion in West Germany is unmistakably migrating towards the right. The SP1).with its harsh public reaction to theapproacil of Communist participation in EuroPean governments, or its demoralising perseca: tion of dissidents through the state law: barring public service to those who canon` prove active loyalty to the Constitution. bads. actually contributed to this change of Mono There may be a political equation runs: social democracy minus the aura of progress equals bureaucracy. Even bet.° these elections, there were some SPD Men,: bers who secretly felt that a spell in oPP°s_i, tion might do the party good. In four years time, the electorate may agree with therm
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