Doing Dandy

How is Ludwig Erhard doing as Chancellor of West Germany? Just dandy, according to all the polls. Gone are the slumping statistics that showed his Christian Democrats losing to the opposition Socialists. Now that faltering Konrad Adenauer is out of the picture, 62% of the voters think that Erhard is doing a "very good" or "good" job. Some 49% of the Socialists who were polled thought so too.

The results cast gloom over a session of the Socialist Party executive committee, which met last week in West Berlin to name a successor to the late Party Chairman Erich Ollenhauer. After two hours of desultory discussion over coffee and Johannisbeersaft (currant juice), they picked the only candidate for the job, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt. He faces a tough job. As one Socialist leader candidly put it: "The boom goes on. People are more prosperous than ever, and they identify prosperity with Erhard."

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