Bulletin No. 47, October 3, 2012

German Politics and Vitamin B

By Victor Grossman

Berlin         

What has Vitamin B to do with politics? For the
answer you must learn a little German, at least one
key word. "Beziehungen" - with a capital "B" -
means connections, especially good connections. It's
smart to have lots of "Vitamin B", and not just the
pharmacy kind!

Now here's a man whose pockets seem filled with
the valuable pills. His great-great-uncle was a
founder of the giant Deutsche Bank, which still
helps rule Germany. He himself was rather weak on
the school side - left back twice in high school and
forced to switch schools because of bad grades - but
with a good, wealthy family that's no real problem.
After finally overcoming college hurdles he moved
into politics, starting well up on the ladder and
climbing higher and higher until he became
minister president in Germany's most populous
state.

True, there were bitter moments. After he was head
of the state government for three years his party
took its biggest beating in half a century. So he lost
that job. For him, the spring of 2005 was not a rosy
one. But by the fall he managed to climb even
higher and became minister of finance for all of
Germany, a top man in a coalition government.

His spell as finance minister is remembered for
three things. One was his privately-arranged chess
tournament. Germany really deserved an
international tournament, he argued, so he gathered
in a million euros in subsidies for it from Porsche,
Telekom and other powerful companies. When it
was pointed out that such private collections were
illegal for a minister, he persuaded critics that these
companies had not sought any special advantages
from a top minister, they simply loved chess! Then
he wanted to assign life-long identification numbers
to all tax-payers. This was rejected - but won him a
not too welcome "prize" - the Big Brother Award. His
third little difficulty had more earnest consequences.
Right up until early September in 2008 he insisted
that the German banking system was stable and
needed no interference. Then, on September 15th,
Lehman Brothers went down the drain, and a big
hunk of German banking headed the same way,
costing taxpayers a bail-out fund of 480 billion
euros. His solution: less regulation for the banks,
while cutting social assistance to those hit by the
recession. Somehow this strange strategy won him
an honorary doctorate at the Heinrich Heine
University in Dusseldorf and an honorary
professorship at Leipzig University, known until
1990 as Karl Marx University. Poor Heine! Poor
Marx! But voters with no academic robes took a
different view, and in the 2009 elections his party
took a disastrous ten point nose-dive. In the district
where he ran for a seat in the new Bundestag he got
swamped, also losing by 10 percentage points. But
he got in anyway, thanks to the proportional
representation system in Germany. And "Vitamin B"
always helps!

It served him well again as a representative.
Although he almost never took the floor and rarely
even attended sessions, he was constantly invited to
give lectures to old buddies in big banks and
corporations, and was paid royally to do so. Because
of the rules, we know only that his fee was never
less than 7000 euros per lecture, but it was
certainly far, far higher. He gave 75 or 80 during the
legislative period, wrote a few well-paying books,
and was named to the board of directors of the giant
Thyssen-Krupp company, which netted an
additional 50,000 euros. All in all, he became the
wealthiest member of the Bundestag, probably
worth well over a million. We don't know how much
for sure because, like Mitt Romney, he prefers to
keep such figures to himself. But he has an
explanation: he shares a bank account with his
wife, so any information about it would be violating
her right to privacy. And he certainly could not
dream of invading the privacy of his own wife!

On October 1st, perhaps after consuming some
more of those good luck vitamins, he was chosen as
candidate for the office of chancellor (like premier)
in the national election campaign for next
September.

Quite a career! And what is most surprising about
it? Peer Steinbrück, 65, a friend of the bankers,
belongs to and is now the major candidate of the
Social Democratic Party! Yes, the SPD, the party
with traditions going back to their socialist fight
against Bismarck, who outlawed it, the party with
the closest ties to the union movement, almost all of
whose leaders support it. And his selection for a star
role in the campaign drama, facing leading actress
Angela Merkel, was by unanimous decision of the
35-member executive committee! The so-called left
wing of the party, more or less represented by
chairman Sigmar Gabriel, collapsed completely and
swallowed Steinbrück lock, stock and pork barrel!
Its attempts to win back lost voters by stealing
program points from The Left party, trying to sound
more socially minded for voters with short
memories, who forget the total betrayal by the SPD
while in office, will probably continue as before.
They have to keep to them. But their voices now
sound more hollow than ever before. Steinbrück
represents a return to just the same awful policies of
the SPD when it was in government from 1998 to
2005 with the Greens, and until 2009 with the
Christian Democrats (and with Steinbrück). Those
years brought terrible laws for working people, worst
of all for millions of the jobless, and involvement in
two wars - against Serbia and in Afghanistan.

How could the executive committee, and both wings
of the party, approve a tight-lipped, tough-looking,
wealthy conservative like Peer Steinbrück? What is
up with the SPD?

The weekly opinion polls provide part of the answer,
giving the SPD 29 percent and the Greens, their
comrades in opposition, 12 percent. Add them up.
Even if they improve, despite present indications,
they hardly reach 50 percent. Of course, by adding
the votes of The Left, now at 8 percent but slowly
improving, they might well reach the needed
majority. But, as most of the SPD leaders, and very
decidedly Steinbrück always stress, "we will never,
never join" with those Reds, or Stalinists, or GDR-
lovers or whatever other epithets they can think of,
none of them fair, correct or genuine. On state and
local levels they have overlooked such inhibitions
more than once. The real problem is rather that the
Left, despite all its own inner differences, is against
the big banks, the giant industrial corporations and
military engagement abroad. And of course it is
disadvantaged by years of red-baiting, in which both
the SPD and, almost as loudly, the Greens, have
happily joined in.

As for the Pirates as possible partners, they now
stand at 7 percent, still have no program at all, are
fighting amongst themselves, and seem to be
steadily sinking.

But Merkel's "Christians", while leading in the polls,
now stand only at 35 percent. Even if their present
partners, the Free Democrats, should survive the
next election - less and less likely at the moment
with 4 percent - they too would be far from 50
percent.

So what is the obvious solution? As usual, better
look right than left. Just as in 2005, the Social
Democrats would snub The Left, heartlessly jilt the
poor Greens and join with the Christians in a "grand
coalition". This would require abandoning most if
not all of their proclaimed social aims - like
reversing their own past guilt toward working people
while cutting taxes on the super-rich. (Does that
sound familiar to Americans?) But it would provide
lots of comfortable cabinet posts and sub-posts with
all the power and perks that go with them. Then,
happily or not, they would join Merkel in forcing
suicidal austerity down European throats while
trying to save the German economy from further
crumbling. As it looks, with southern Europe in
trouble and East Asia less and less resilient, they
could no longer count on export surpluses to keep
strong. And who knows, more German workers,
threatened with cuts and lay-offs, might just take a
good look at big protest demonstrations in Greece,
Portugal, Spain, Rumania and who knows where
else?

This rightward spin of the SPD should make it
much easier for The Left to go on an enlightenment
offensive and really do some punching. Can it get its
own act together? There are signs of this, more of its
banners are visible when people do demonstrate,
and its figures in the polls are slowly climbing again,
though probably not enough to save it in the coming
state election in Lower Saxony on January 20th.
Three years ago it got 7.1 percent there and won 11
seats in the legislature. Now it seems stuck at 4
percent - and 5 percent are required to get even one
seat. Psychologically, that vote could count - but
January is still three months away.

Steinbrück refused to let party members pin him
down on his own program, not even on party
promises to reverse those past sins by trying to raise
pension rates or retreat from the postponement of
full pension age to 67 (as approved by all parties
except The Left). Indeed, he avoids any promises at
all. "I need to keep some leg room free for myself",
he announced. That's elbow room in German. He
illustrated this intention with a weak smile and an
awkward if menacing little swing with one leg. Few
returned the smile. But he does plan to  quit that
job with Thyssen-Krupp, he announced. Yet he is
certainly not giving up on those magic pills.

That's the big problem with German politics. All the
main parties count on Vitamin B. Sadly, only that
one pariah party, The Left, never gets such valuable
prescriptions. Or maybe, in the long run, that could
be a very good thing!

___________________________________________

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