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Priorities and Policies
In this atmosphere, Brandt will seek to prove—even more conclusively than it was proved in the Grand Coalition —that his Socialists are eminently regierungsfähig, or able to govern.
And what of Brandt's own ability? He hardly fits the old stereotype of the superefficient German. Though he usually struggles into his office by 9:00 a.m., he hates to get up and must be handled gingerly until he has had coffee and the first of the 40 or so Attache cigarillos he smokes each day. "The man is useless until noon," says one of his aides. A night creature, Brandt grows more animated as the hour grows later.
During the campaign, his early-afternoon speeches were wooden and broken; by 4 p.m., they were more coherent but still lacked vibrance; by 8, he was witty and forceful, folding the audience in his spell while tossing off withering asides to hostile hecklers. After that, while throwing back glasses of Benedictine and brandy, he often talked with local politicians and swapped political jokes with newsmen until 3 a.m. One of Brandt's favorites: After the Soviet-Czechoslovak summit confrontation at Cierna last summer, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev turns to Premier Aleksei Kosygin and asks: "Did you see that beautiful watch Svoboda was wearing?" "No," replies Kosygin. "Let me see it."
Brandt has been attacked by conservatives for the permissive attitude he and his second wife Rut show toward their two hippie sons. Peter, 21, was arrested last year for participation in a riot, sentenced to a $50 fine and a four-week suspended jail term. Lars, 18, whose blond hair almost reaches his shoulders, said last week that even though he considers himself a member of A.P.O. (the far-left Anti-Parliamentary Opposition), he favored his father's coalition. But he expressed serious reservations about having to move from the Brandt home in Venusberg to Bonn's Palais Schaumburg, the residence of German Chancellors.
Vater Brandt has no such reservations. Once in the Palais, he can be expected to deal immediately with mark revaluation and the signing of the nuclear non-proliferation pact (which Kiesinger resisted on the ground that it could leave Germany at a disadvantage in peaceful nuclear research). Brandt's main task will be to look eastward. He and Scheel are agreed on an approach to East Germany, which the Christian Democrats preferred to pretend did not exist. In hopes of easing the economic lot of the people in the East, Brandt aims to stop short of full diplomatic recognition but to seek closer travel and communications links and trade opportunities with the East Germans.
Brandt also harbors grander schemes for Europe that would break down the barriers between the East and West blocs. While some critics feel he is overly optimistic, he wants to accept the Soviet proposal for a European security conference, provided the U.S. would be invited to attend. He would be prepared to renounce Germany's claim to its lost territories that comprise some 40,000 square miles in