Word: schmidts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Possessed by Caesarmania" and "obsessed with power." That is how Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl has recently been castigating Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. One Social Democratic retort, fired off by Party Chairman Willy Brandt, is that the Christian Democrats are "oozing arrogance and stupidity with their upper-class attitudes." Schmidt, whose sharp tongue long ago earned him the nickname "the Lip," contemptuously refers to Kohl, who is Minister-President (governor) of the Rhineland-Palatinate, as "the Minister-President of where...
This mudslinging has typified the West German election campaign, now in its final stretch; on Oct. 3 voters will go to the polls to decide whether to keep Schmidt or replace him with Challenger Kohl. As they come down to the wire, the two Helmuts-as they have been for months-are running neck and neck. Kohl, hoping to get a last-minute boost from the victory of Sweden's nonsocialists, last week exhorted his countrymen to "follow the Swedes...
...Schmidt, 57, is unquestionably the more popular of the two. In one recent poll, 53% of the voters favored him as Chancellor, compared with 38% for Kohl. But the Social Democratic Party (S.P.D.) is not nearly so well liked. This could mean trouble for Schmidt; under the country's parliamentary system, West Germans vote for parties and individual representatives to the Bundestag, rather than directly for a Chancellor...
Much of the electorate seems to believe it is time for a change. The Social Democrats, in coalition with the small, liberal Free Democratic Party, have been in power for seven years. Schmidt, however, has been Chancellor only since May 1974; he took office when Brandt resigned after one of his closest aides was unmasked as an East German...
Another problem for the S.P.D. is its reputation, mostly undeserved, for being soft on Communism. Though Schmidt is an outspoken antiCommunist, many Germans are dismayed by what they now feel was the excessive willingness of Brandt to normalize relations with the regimes of Eastern Europe without sufficient quid...