Posted on 09/21/2002 1:32:15 PM PDT by tomball
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FRANKFURT, Germany, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Germany goes to the polls Sunday for what looks to be the closest election in 50 years and the most bitter one in its impact on the country's longstanding alliance with the United States.
The incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's blunt refusal to join any U.S.-led attack on Iraq, even with a United Nations mandate, soured relations that have now touched a new low over a German minister's reported claim that President George W. Bush was using foreign crises to detract attention from domestic troubles -- just like Adolf Hitler.
Schroeder wrote a soothing and regretful letter to Bush, saying Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin denied making the remarks quoted in a German newspaper. "I would like to assure you that no one has a place at my Cabinet table who makes a connection between the American president and a criminal," Schroeder wrote.
But U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, noting the remarks had "poisoned" the atmosphere between Washington and Berlin, told the Financial Times: "It has not been a happy time with Germany."
"There have clearly been some things said that are way beyond the pale. The reported statements ... even if half of what was reported was said, are simply unacceptable," Rice added.
The latest row with Washington came too late for its effect to be measured in opinion polls, which show the Social Democrat chancellor in a statistical dead heat with his conservative rival, Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber. The conservative challenger was quick to pounce on the latest embarrassment in German-American relations, attacking the Justice minister at a Friday night campaign rally in Berlin.
"Every day, every hour that this unbearable woman remains in office and represents Germany is damaging to Germany, very damaging," Stoiber said.
With both Stoiber and Schroeder running just short of 40 percent in the polls, neither the conservatives nor the Social Democrats will be able to govern alone, and the key to the next German government is likely to rest with the smaller parties like the Greens and Liberals.
The Greens have been in coalition with Schroeder's Social Democrats for the past four years, and the Liberals helped keep the previous conservative government of Helmut Kohl in power for 16 years.
But with both Greens and Liberals running at around 7 percent to 8 percent in the polls, a simple coalition of two parties may not be enough to secure a majority in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. As a result, there has been speculation that the Liberals could join a larger coalition with Schroeder and the Greens, or that Schroeder and Stoiber could agree to govern jointly in a "Grand Coalition" of the two big parties.
The uncertainty of the outcome, and the row with an America that most Germans still count as their closest ally, have cast a shadow over an election in a country deeply troubled by the faltering of its once-potent economic machine. Commentators and politicians are starting to use the phrase first deployed by European Central Bank economist Otmar Issing, that Germany was becoming "the sick man of Europe."
For the past seven years, Germany has scored the lowest rate of economic growth in Europe. Over 4 million people are out of work, and despite the injection of a trillion dollars into the former East Germany since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, unification remains far from success.
"It's a good thing that this election campaign is finally over," the mass-circulation daily Bild said in an editorial. "The government parties are damaging German-American relations in an unprecedented manner for the sake of their electoral success. It will be hard to vote tomorrow (Sunday)."
Nonetheless, close to 60 million are expected to go to the polls Sunday. There has been a record postal vote, and many observers reckon that there could be a record number of voters, exceeding the 82 percent turnout of four years ago.
The greater the turnout, particularly among women, the better the chances of Schroeder's re-election. Women account for 52 percent of the German electorate and according to a poll by the Forsa institute published in the latest Stern magazine, 44 percent back Schroeder's Social Democrats compared with only 37 percent of men. By contrast, only 36 percent of women backed Stoiber's conservatives and 39 percent of men.
The telegenic and media-friendly Schroeder, who has been married four times, deliberately courts the female vote, and his journalist wife Doris has a high profile as a modern woman with both a career and a marriage to an equally modern man. Stoiber, despite two daughters who work as lawyers, comes across by contrast as an old-fashioned type. Social Democrat posters feature a 1950s-era black and white photo of a housewife working in her kitchen, with the caption: "The future according to Stoiber."
Does this mean Herta is stepping down?
Now we understand more clearly the origin of "sourkraut."
That's an awful lot like US statistics - many women are Liberals, and more men are Conservative than Liberal.
I worked with Germans (mostly men) for many years, and they were amazed that we could have elected clintoon twice. But we did.
And this election is as close as our last one was. We came within one cemetery of having the other guy as President. (No, I can't bring myself to type the alternative)
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