NO politician in West Germany's postwar history has risen so fast and made so few admirers in the process as Rainer Candidus Barzel. He is almost all a politician should be: intelligent, hardworking, cool under pressure, a first-rate tactician and gifted debater. Yet Barzel suffers from a serious image problem. In voter preference polls, he badly trails the warmer and more personable Brandt, and even rates below some members of his own party. His critics have pinned on him a wide assortment of unlovely epithets: "aalglatt" (slippery as an eel), "a well-rehearsed Pharisee,"...
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