Word: chancellor
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...this bravura performance, you'd think Schr?der and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) were coasting to victory in the Sept. 18 elections. In fact, the SPD trails the Christian Democrats (CDU) and its sister party, the CSU, by 13 points, and virtually every editorialist in Germany has written the Chancellor...
...There's little to suggest that Schr?der can pull off a third straight election victory. The SPD has clawed back some ground?it notched up one percentage point in the polls, from 29% to 30%?and the Chancellor himself got a Nobel Peace Prize nomination last week for his opposition to the war in Iraq. But none of the other signs are good. The party hasn't been able to capitalize on the CDU's rocky first few weeks of campaigning. Unemployment is still at a record high and a recent uptick in economic growth may have come too late...
...tell that to Holger Peters, 24, who was cheering the Chancellor on in Magdeburg. "Schr?der has achieved a lot for Germany," he says. "[CDU candidate] Angela Merkel and the others don't have any arguments for improving the situation." Peters even likes the "one-euro jobs" that Schr?der introduced last year as part of his controversial economic reforms. Intended to reintegrate long-term unemployed into the labor market, the jobs are structured so that employers pay only ?1 per hour, with the rest of the employee's income covered by unemployment benefits. Skeptics say the system encourages wage dumping...
Merkel's manner belies a quiet revolution in European politics. If elected, she will become Germany's first female Chancellor, a big accomplishment in a political culture in which women still struggle against a glass ceiling. And she'd be the first Chancellor in a unified Germany to have grown up in the communist east. "Ten years ago, the idea that we'd have a female Chancellor from East Germany would have raised nothing but laughs," says political analyst Alfons Söllner. "Today it will make people proud...
Merkel received her introduction to Western politics when Helmut Kohl, Germany's larger-than-life Chancellor, tapped her as Minister for Women and Youth for his Cabinet in 1991. She established herself as both ambitious and willing to learn, outmaneuvering a succession of male colleagues to take the party leadership in 2000. "She's criticized for being timid," says political scientist Gerd Langguth, her biographer, "but she's a political panther...