LOOKING UP: After a faltering start, Merkel's campaign skills are improving
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The cdu should be courting votes rather than controversy in the east. Some 26% of east German voters intend to cast their ballots for the Linksbündnis, according to Forsa. The appeal, Linksbündnis co-founder and former spd Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine told Time, is that the party "offers an alternative. Wage- and salary-earners, pensioners, young people looking for education urgently need somebody who represents them in parliament." Merkel knows she needs to reach these groups, too. She never misses a chance to remind voters of Schröder's 1998 election pledge that if he couldn't reduce unemployment he wouldn't deserve re-election. Joblessness has increased by 1 million since he first took office.
The cdu is pitching Merkel as honest and unvarnished. Posters depict the 51-year-old former research chemist as apple-cheeked and glowing in an apricot-colored jacket. She's also lightening up on the stump a bit, seeming surer, more relaxed and even cracking the occasional joke. The clean-cut, no-nonsense image is meant to make Merkel look more trustworthy than the slicker, suaver Schröder. "If we were to disappoint voters again the way Schröder did in 2002, people would ask themselves whether there is any party they can vote for," says Norbert Röttgen, a senior member of Merkel's campaign team. "Being honest about value-added tax is a strategy to regain the trust of the people." And Merkel is backing up the persona with policies. In addition to the vat increase, she has suggested weakening job-protection laws and reforming union wage-bargaining practices.
Trouble is, the spd owes much of its unpopularity to an attempt to introduce just such measures. Germans seem to want reform, but are determined to punish reformers. "As voters, we may believe we can handle uncomfortable truths," says Eckhard Jesse, professor of political science at Chemnitz Technical University in eastern Germany, "but when it actually comes to listening and accepting them, we shy away. Although it was extremely courageous for Merkel to come out and say that she'll raise vat, it may not have been a good idea." At the Dresden rally, though, Merkel's brand of plain talking worked for some. "I voted for the Greens in 2002, but I'm going to vote for the cdu this time," says Dagmar Schaarschmidt, 46 and unemployed. "Merkel is being honest and that's why I trust her."
So far, Schröder's strategy for winning a third term seems to be: stick with what worked. In 2002, he squeaked through to re-election by playing up his opposition to the war in Iraq and responding quickly to devastating floods in eastern Germany in the month before polling day. Earlier this month he criticized U.S. policy toward Iran and urged President Bush to "take the military option off the table. We've already seen that it doesn't work." csu campaigner Spreng doubts this tactic will sway voters a second time. Schröder's "toolbox is empty," he says. "He's not able to conjure up another flood, and the Iran attempt is dead in the water."
Schröder and the spd could still get a boost if the cdu continues to sabotage itself. Merkel has to hit the right notes, and keep her colleagues in tune; otherwise, voters may yet find an unintended meaning in her campaign theme: "Angie, Angie, ain't it time we said goodbye?"