After Election Debacle: Steinmeier Faces Future as Opposition Leader

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Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party has always been a party of contradictions. The evening of Sunday's German national election was no exception.

SPD chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has just received the worst result in party history, is standing on a stage at SPD headquarters in the Willy Brandt building in Berlin. It is a bitter moment, for Steinmeier and his party. He is expected to make a statement, but he can't begin yet -- the crowd won't stop cheering for him.

It is a paradoxical moment, but it's Steinmeier's moment. Instead of bemoaning the SPD's election loss, he quickly moves on to asserting his claim to power. The SPD, he says, must reinvent itself -- with him, he is quick to add, as its opposition leader in the German parliament, the Bundestag.

"We have to look forward," Steinmeier calls out to the assembled SPD members. "I intend to be very committed and to fight."

What Steinmeier is saying is that he wants to keep going. But the situation couldn't be more difficult. It doesn't take a psychic to predict that the party faces tough times ahead.

After seeing its share of the vote drop by 11 percentage points, the SPD will have to take a long hard look at itself. Members of its left wing are already calling for a "reorientation of the party, both strategically and in terms of content." They will urge party leaders to further open up the party for coalitions with the far-left Left Party -- formerly something of a pariah in German politics due to its links to the Communist party of East Germany -- on the national level. Following alliances between the two parties in German states, the so-called "red-red" option on the national level is becoming more and more likely.

Steinmeier will have to accept this, or others will embark on this path without him: Andrea Nahles, for example, a young and influential leftist within the SPD, or Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who has already entered into a coalition with the Left Party in the Berlin state assembly.

A Prussian at Heart

Steinmeier may come from the Lippe region in northwest Germany, but he is an efficient Prussian at heart. When he takes on a task, he completes it to the best of his ability -- something that was also true during the election campaign.

Although Steinmeier, a lawyer by training and a senior government official for many years, has never been considered a great speaker, he hogged the limelight during the campaign. On market squares throughout Germany, he sharply criticized Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and, in a booming voice, held his own in the face of poor poll results.

He demonstrated that he has strong nerves, even remaining composed when the SPD's polling numbers plummeted. He gave a confident performance in a Sept. 13 television debate against Chancellor Angela Merkel, prompting his 13-year-old daughter to congratulate him by text message after the debate: "Good, Dad." Most viewers also felt that he outperformed the chancellor.

Steinmeier is a political professional, which speaks in his favor. The SPD has few such politicians left in its ranks. He knows a lot, is diligent and can think strategically. His nickname, fittingly enough, is: "His Efficiency."

It's a name that also reflects his management style. Steinmeier is not given to rash behavior. Instead, he is thoughtful and he surrounds himself with many advisers. He makes decisions only after careful consideration.

Taking the Credit

In the "grand coalition" government of the CDU and SPD which has governed Germany for the last four years, he tried to create the impression that he, rather than Merkel, was really the unofficial boss. He wanted to be the one to present a plan for everything, to point Merkel in the right direction and to convince people through actions rather than words.

The bailout of the troubled German carmaker Opel, the "cash-for-clunkers" scrapping premium to boost new car sales, the major economic stimulus program to combat the financial crisis -- much of what was undertaken by the government in recent months emerged primarily from Steinmeier's think tank in the Foreign Ministry. But, as often happens in a coalition, the chancellor was pleased to take up his proposals and ultimately claim credit for them.

This enraged Steinmeier -- to the extent that rage is possible, given his mild temperament. Merkel, he said angrily, is a "me-too chancellor." But his criticism was of little use, as Merkel routinely discussed her successes on evening television programs. Her approval ratings went up, while Steinmeier and the SPD remained in a distant second place in the opinion polls. He learned the painful lesson of what it means to play the role of junior partner in an administration. Perhaps he should have risked, at least once, a major confrontation with Merkel. But he shied away from that. As a result, although he managed to rise to the level of master within the SPD, he remained nothing but a servant in the coalition.

Steinmeier also has his disadvantages. He is often too defensive, too hesitant and simply too decent. He is not good at the kind of sharp and snappy attack which mobilizes supporters -- and which an opposition leader needs to be able to do. In the German parliament, the Bundestag, he will now compete head-on with orators like top Left Party politicians Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi. Steinmeier's adversaries within the SPD will also pay close attention to the competition for the position of leader of the opposition.

Missed Opportunities

The SPD could probably have done better in the election. It has the potential. In the last parliamentary election, 16 million Germans voted for the SPD. This time only 10 million voted for the party. With Steinmeier as chancellor candidate, the much-touted mobilization of SPD voters was only a moderate success.

Of course, he could have used the subject of Afghanistan offensively, as many of his fellow party members advised him to do. He could have transformed himself from a vehement supporter of the mission into an advocate of speedy withdrawal. He could have attempted to animate the pacifist soul of the SPD. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder smoothed the way for Steinmeier to take this approach when, shortly before the election, he called for the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan by 2015. This may have been a subject the candidate could have used to mobilize voters. But he wasn't interested.

"It wouldn't be credible if I were to change my position now," he said. He did allow a document to be leaked from the Foreign Ministry in which officials openly discussed a timetable for withdrawal. But that was the extent of it. He did not name a concrete withdrawal date. He simply refused to take the issue any further.

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• Part 1: Steinmeier Faces Future as Opposition Leader
• Part 2: The Curse of Schröder