By SPIEGEL Staff
The chancellor is determined to make the upcoming campaign entirely about her own person. She believes that her high approval ratings among Germans are a result of her ability to stay out of petty partisan squabbling. She is so determined to remain above the fray that she never voices a word of public criticism of Steinmeier, even as he blasts her for being a weak leader.
Indeed, Merkel's campaign for the European elections completely avoids conflict with political adversaries -- essentially a campaign without confrontation. The CDU's leading candidate in the election is European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering, a dull gentleman who can charitably be described as unobtrusive. On its campaign posters, the party features non-committal slogans like "We in Europe."
Merkel, of course, knows how unpopular this approach is in a CDU that, after being part of a grand coalition for four years, is raring to re-enter the ring with the SPD. The CDU's costly advertising campaign is at best "harmless" to the party, says Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, who once organized hard-hitting campaigns as Hesse Governor Roland Koch's former campaign manager.
A Second Humiliation for Seehofer?
Still, the CDU result is not the conservatives' most vulnerable Achilles heel. The greatest harm could be done by a poor showing by the CSU. The Bavarian party is in a particularly difficult position ahead of Sunday's vote, falling as it does right in the middle of a Bavarian public holiday, making it that much more difficult to mobilize supporters. Decent turnout, however, will be vital if the party is to exceed the five-percent hurdle (measured nationwide) necessary for representation in the European parliament. Should it fail, it will be the first time ever that the European parliament would be without CSU delegates.
And that would be a nightmare for Merkel. After having lost its absolute majority in Bavaria, the CSU would be humiliated a second time in a row, and party leader Horst Seehofer would abandon all consideration for his sister party. There is little doubt that he would go on the attack, and the CDU would likely be among his victims.
At a meeting of the two parties' leaders last Monday, Merkel got a firsthand taste of the tension between the CDU and CSU. During the meeting, it was announced that the coalition had agreed to provide tax relief to farmers for purchases of agro-diesel, a demand the CSU has repeatedly made of Merkel.
Not all CDU leaders agree, however. It was time to tell farmers that they too are subject to the rules of the market economy, Lower Saxony Governor Christian Wulff and his counterpart in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, Peter Harry Carstensen -- both of the CDU -- said.
Remained on the Sidelines
Manfred Weber, a CSU member of the European Parliament from Lower Bavaria, promptly jumped on the two governors' comments, saying: "We will be happy to tell our farmers that it's time for them to declare bankruptcy. But first Messrs. Koch and (North Rhine-Westphalia Governor Jürgen) Rüttgers will have to tell Opel workers that they're losing their jobs." Merkel behaved the way she usually does when conflict erupts within the party leadership: She remained on the sidelines.
Her hope is that discord within the CDU/CSU will wane as the election season progresses. Besides, she believes that the central problem in the conservatives' campaign has already been solved: The question as to who represents the conservatives on economic issues.
The debate has more or less disappeared since Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg became immersed in his work as the new economics minister, having taken over from Michael Glos in February. This is good news for Merkel, given that many middle-class voters have recently been turning toward the FDP out of disappointment with her government's economic policy. Guttenberg's job is to win them back, but to do so it is necessary that he not disregard all principles of regulatory policy.
At the moment, Guttenberg seems to be the last member of the government willing to express a concept that ought to be self-evident in a market economy: That a company can go into bankruptcy, even if it's called Opel or Karstadt.
Early on in the Opel crisis, Guttenberg had his analysts figure out how costly it would be for the treasury were the car maker to go bankrupt. According to Guttenberg's analysts, an Opel bankruptcy would have been much cheaper than a government bailout.
The bureaucrats at the economics ministry estimated that an unemployed Opel worker represents an average annual cost to the government, in terms of lost tax revenues and social welfare costs, of €22,700 ($32,200). The projections varied, depending on how many job losses one assumed. In the worst case, in which all 25,000 Opel jobs and roughly the same number of jobs among suppliers would have been lost, the government would have faced costs of about €1.1 billion ($1.56 billion).
Calculating a Bankruptcy
That calculation, though, was based on a complete liquidation of Opel and assumed that, according to an internal economics ministry memo, "no employee would find new work, which, despite the difficult situation in the labor market, is not a realistic scenario." "It is more likely," the memo continued, "that in the event of a bankruptcy at Opel and its suppliers, even with significant capacity reduction, a large number of jobs would be preserved."
Experience shows that, in a typical bankruptcy, about a quarter of the jobs are lost, which, in the case of Opel, would have cost the government and social insurance agencies about €300 million ($426 million). There is a massive difference between this figure and the bailout package the government ultimately agreed to in conjunction with Magna, the Austrian-Canadian auto parts maker that bought a stake in Opel in conjunction with a Russian-owned bank. The cost to the government is roughly €4.5 billion ($6.4 billion).
Still, his stark calculation made the economics minister vulnerable. Merely the fact that he dares to mention the word "bankruptcy" is enough for the SPD to portray him as a dark knight of neo-liberalism. The man on whom the CDU/CSU's hopes are pinned has also become the SPD's potential bogeyman.
Steinmeier and SPD Chairman Franz Müntefering are confident that their party's performance in the European election will be far better that it was last time. For the Social Democrats, much depends on whether they can leverage a polarizing campaign into healthy turnout.
As in 2005, the tool of choice today is aggression, and the party is eager to unleash its confrontational side. During an outing on Berlin's Wannsee Lake of the SPD's conservative wing last Tuesday evening, the weather suited the mood on board: black clouds and the rumbling of thunder. Inside the boat, SPD parliamentary leader Peter Struck sought to fire up his fellow Social Democrats. "I'm sick and tired of the Grand Coalition," he told his audience, to a round of hearty applause.
'Only Pandemonium'
Then it was Steinmeier's turn. "A flock of chickens is orderly compared with the CDU," the chancellor candidate said. "While we were busy fighting the crisis, they had only pandemonium to offer."
Things were even worse at the CSU, said Steinmeier. He compared the conservative Bavarian party with "a herd of young oxen being led out to pasture. They're so strong they can hardly walk, and then all they do is trample the grass."
It was a familiar example of stormy campaign rhetoric, although it raises the question as to why Steinmeier would have spent four years governing with such horrible people, and why he wants to continue governing with them for another four years, as the chancellor in a grand coalition.
Perhaps Steinmeier himself would prefer to be less aggressive, because it is more in keeping with his character, but his fellow Social Democrats prefer an altogether more caustic approach. Once again, they hope to stylize the parliamentary election into a fateful decision. According to their latest core message, a victory for the CDU/CSU and the FDP would mean a continuation of the same policies that led to the eruption of the financial and economic crisis in the first place.
But there are plenty of potential pitfalls for the Social Democrats. In the past week, for example, it became clear that old conflicts between the party's right and left wings could be reignited at any time. A number parliamentarians from the SPD's left wing rebelled against the so-called debt limitation, with which the Grand Coalition plans to impose budgetary discipline on future generations of politicians. The provision is too strict for the left wing of the party. Steinmeier, Müntefering and parliamentary leader Struck did their best to limit the number of rebels.
The other uncertainty is, as always, the election outcome. If the SPD fails to make significant gains on the CDU in the European poll, Steinmeier will be unable to proclaim his election goal of making the SPD the strongest party. If the SPD lags behind the conservatives by significantly more than 5 percent, any such claim will seem ridiculous. In that case, the party would have no choice but to wait for the outcome of opinion polls -- and hope for the best. Steinmeier would be forced to review each week's poll results to determine whether he has made any gains on the CDU/CSU, so that at some point, if and when the numbers are right, he could say: The time has come to bring back 2005, and to awaken the Schröder in me.
By Florian Gathmann, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Roland Nelles, René Pfister and Christian Reiermann
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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