SCHROEDER ON THE ROPES: Ralf Goergens reports on Gerhard Schroeder’s many domestic political problems. According to Goergens, Schroeder has painted himself into a corner, politically:

Since the Bush administration isn’t really asking for anything the American military couldn’t do without (the US Army already has received all NBC-related equipment it needs from Germany some years ago) and has repeatedly caused internal trouble for Schroeder by similar requests parts of the German press are starting to suspect that GWB is doing it to show the Schroeder administration up (or maybe just for his own private amusement). . . .

Schroeder’s Red-Green government had won the elections by shamelessly pandering to the crucial 5 % of hard line leftists whose support they had lost because of their (timid) economic reforms during their first term in government. They can’t risk offending them now because there are important elections in two states early next year; if they want to have any chance to gain a majority in the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) they’ll need to win them both. . . .

All this poses a dilemma for Schroeder. On the one hand he wants to get on GWB’s good side again, on the other he can’t afford to alienate his hard-left supporters again. He might even try a repeat-performance of his federal election campaign, provided the war on Iraq isn’t over by then. I sincerely hope that he won’t sink this low; Germany might even be unceremoniously kicked out of NATO. Except for ideologues Germans in general don’t hate America, but a lot of them are going to vote for anybody who promises to keep them out of such conflicts, however foolish that may be considering circumstances. I think that even that won’t help the Social Democrats, public opinion is solidly against them and there are real rifts even within Schroeder’s government.

Read the whole, much longer post. Very interesting. Meanwhile fellow Germanoblogger Papa Scott reports that Schroeder’s candidates are being accused of lying about budget projections. I’m as shocked as Papa Scott that anyone would accuse a politician of lying.