Leading from Strength

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University of Hamburg. While still a student, he joined the S.P.D., partly because his schoolteacher father had been a lifelong member. A successful stint as a whiz-kid interior minister in the Hamburg local government at 31 earned him national recognition. In his first try in 1953 he was elected to the Bundestag. In 1969, after two years as S.P.D. Bundestag floor leader, he entered Brandt's national Cabinet as Defense Minister. By the time Brandt began to lose his political authority Schmidt was West Germany's internationally regarded Finance Minister and the Chancellor's increasingly powerful standin. "When occasionally Willy wouldn't show up, it seemed perfectly natural that Helmut would take over the sessions," a Cabinet colleague recalls. Just as naturally, when Brandt resigned after the Guillaume scandal, Schmidt took over as Chancellor.

As popular as he is with the public, Schmidt does not have correspondingly dominant control over his own government, which is a coalition of his own S.P.D. and the middle-road Free Democratic Party. In the surprisingly close 1976 elections, the S.P.D.-F.D.P. coalition ended up with a greatly reduced majority —253 out of 496 voting seats in the Bundestag. Although F.D.P. today has only 40 seats in the Bundestag compared with the S.P.D.'s 224, the F.D.P. can, and does, exercise disproportionate power in the coalition. With four key portfolios in its hands, the F.D.P. can make its voice heard in major policy decisions. Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, for instance, does not always agree with Schmidt; he is currently concerned that Bonn is perhaps too soft toward the Soviets and too tough toward the U.S.

Schmidt also faces a division within his own party, provoked mainly by Wehner's small but militant left-wingers. They are unhappy about the F.D.P.'s disproportionate power. In addition to their dovish stand on European defense, the leftists also differ with Schmidt on nuclear energy and social welfare policies, which, they complain, have too often been compromised for the sake of limiting inflation, and for the sake of accommodating the F.D.P.

Schmidt is almost as popular in other Western European countries as at home. Nonetheless, there is a lingering fear behind lots of closed government doors that the Chancellor just might be, or become, too strong; that the goblins of West Germany's past could emerge to influence its Continental behavior. Other Europeans still have deep memories of the Germany of the past and, fairly or not, wonder if the new West Germany ever acts entirely in the present.

Not that they expect a resurgence of authoritarianism; the proven solidity of West Germany's democracy persuasively rules that out Rather, they point to other experiences that have contributed to West German insecurity, like the devastating inflation of the Weimar Republic in 1922-23, which helps explain the German obsession with maintaining the value of their currency.

One senior British diplomat who admires Schmidt complains that the new West German leadership is still too narrowly focused on national interest instead of international cooperation. Says he: "We haven't yet seen the wider vision. It is still 'Germany First.' And the German stand —like Scarlett O'Hara's vow that 'I'm never going to be hungry again'is 'We are