Regime Change? Nein, Danke

Germany's red-green coalition squeaks by and Gerhard Schröder hangs onto the chancellorship by the skin of his teeth

Some are calling it the most suspenseful election in this republic's history. Well, yes and no. Certainly the margin of difference between the two leading parties has never been thinner. But there have been election nights in the past when Germans went to bed not knowing yet who would be forming a governing coalition with whom. This year, they've retired not knowing which of two blocs would limp across a finish line vote counters moved to the wee hours of the following morning.

Political junkies have toyed with alternative formations, but really, two fronts have been pretty clear from the top: The Social Democrats (SPD), led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and their junior coalition partners since 1998, the Greens, led by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on the center-left. On the right, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and their candidate for the chancellorship, Bavarian PM Edmund Stoiber, and the Free Democrats (FDP), who surprised many by nominating a chancellor candidate for the first time, Guido Westerwelle. Lost in all this jockeying for position has been the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS), especially after its most charismatic spokesman, Gregor Gysi, exited the political stage in August.

So, the numbers. Both the SPD and CDU chalked up 38.5 percent. The SPD is down 2.4 percent from its 1998 results, while the CDU gained 3.4. But here's where it gets interesting: The Greens did better than expected, scoring 8.6 percent, while the FDP fared poorly: 7.4. Both parties actually bettered their '98 showings, but the FDP had been soaring all summer and made a point of shooting for 18 percent, hence, the aura of failure.

A showing of at least 5 percent is required to reserve seats in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, and while the PDS scraped over the hurdle in '98, this time, they've fallen to 4.0 percent. Nonetheless: Two PDS MP candidates have been directly voted in, and this is where things get a tad complicated. Germans have two votes: the first goes to a party representative; the second for a party overall (for more on how all this works, the Financial Times offers a very fine FAQ). The SPD has done rather better with the first votes than with the second.

Voter participation this year dropped to under 80 percent, a pretty poor showing by German standards. It rained in Berlin, while the sun shined in Munich. Could that have influenced the outcome, the stronger-than-expected showing for the CDU? Possibly, but if so, only minutely.

Greater factors might be these: Election fever in Germany peaked at least a week ago. At least. The narrative had run its course. The CDU and FDP enjoyed comfortable leads all summer long, but then came Schröder, the Clintonesque Comeback Kid. He promised immediate relief for the victims of the devastating August floods and he ensured Germans that they would not be playing along in the military adventure Bush and Blair were cooking up, the imminent invasion of Iraq. Polls showed the SPD pulling ahead of the CDU.

Three days before the election, an odd event jostled the undecided vote: The FDP's odd man out, Jürgen Möllemann, inexplicably revived the grand anti-Semitism debate that was supposed to have faded to black months ago (See also Hot Potato Politics) with a direct mailing slamming not only Israel PM Sharon, but also Germany's primary Jewish organization.

At about the same time, came Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin's now infamous remarks supposedly "comparing" Bush with Hitler. Absurd, really. Some world leader is rattling sabers to distract from domestic troubles? Of course it sounds familiar to any German.

Whether this fraction of a sentence was a slip of the tongue, or whether the tongue slipped at all in the first place, it was spectacularly unusual the way both White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made a point of making a point of a story in a tiny regional paper. Naturally, Stoiber ran with it: Schröder was personally and purposefully poisoning transatlantic relationships.

It's enough to make you suspect that the US was hoping, perhaps even actively, for regime change not only in Iraq but in Germany as well. How terribly bothersome it'll be for the Bush administration if democracy gets in the way.

Elsewhere

For profiles of the major players and run-downs on the major issues, the AOL-TW online portal to the election, Germany Decides 2002, will do, with stories from CNN and Time. There's more beef, though, at the Financial Times.

What is the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies? Both less and more than you might think, reports Ken Silverstein in The Nation.

IndieWIRE interviews film director Oliver Hirschbiegel.