A Grade-B Performance

The three-week-long drama over whether the West German Parliament would ratify the treaties of Moscow and Warsaw ended enigmatically last week. The Bundestag ratified both agreements by wide margins--248 to 10 for the Moscow treaty. But 238 opposition members of the Bundestag abstained from voting on the Moscow treaty. In the Bundesrat, the upper house, a majority of the members--21 out of 41--also abstained. Chancellor Willy Brandt, leader of the Social Democratic Party, grandly described the vote as opening "a new phase in the history of the Federal Republic." That may well be so, but, reports TIME'S Bonn Bureau Chief Benjamin Cate, the result was a triumph for neither Brandt nor Rainer Barzel, head of the opposition Christian Democratic Union:

As the final vote was announced, Brandt, his face impassive, sat stoically on the government's front bench. The treaties--and with them the attendant progress toward East-West detente--had carried well enough. But the fact that the opposition C.D.U. had abstained almost to a man deprived Brandt of the "broad majority" he had labored to achieve and was a dismaying reversal of a carefully worked out bipartisan compromise.

Only two days earlier, the C.D.U. had decided to free its Deputies to vote for the treaties if they wanted to do so, after gaining their support for a bipartisan Bundestag resolution on West Germany's understanding of the pacts. On the eve of the scheduled vote, however, the C.D.U.'s conservative Bavarian wing, Franz Josef Strauss's Christian Social Union, decided to vote against the treaties. Faced with that threat to party unity, Barzel reversed course, and only three hours before the final Bundestag vote, ordered the C.D.U. Deputies to abstain from voting. By opting for party unity instead of statesmanship, he earned the widespread condemnation of the West German press and reinforced his reputation as a political opportunist.

The vote dramatized Bonn's present crisis of leadership. Both Brandt and Barzel had seen the impasse coming at least three months ago, but did little to head it off. Brandt, the brilliant idea man, remained characteristically aloof. He knew that his unstable coalition of Social Democrats and Free Democrats included some potential defectors on the treaty votes; they were treated like traitors, which simply strengthened their resolve to defect.

Moment of Truth. Barzel, the reputedly clever tactician, was shortsighted and defiant, and helped paint his party into a tight corner by adamantly opposing ratification. The C.D.U. leaders repeatedly charged that the treaties were a sellout of German interests to Moscow. Privately, though, they hoped that the treaties would pass, so that the party should not bear the onus of holding up detente. Thus both sides procrastinated until the moment of truth arrived--and the result was what one Bonn political observer describes as "a grade-B performance--Brandt and Barzel."

The three weeks of confusion and chaos that have just ended inspired the quip that "Both sides have a chairman, but neither has a leader." In the wake of the vote, the quip seemed fully justified. Recognizing that his government could be brought down by a no-confidence vote at any time, Brandt asked the opposition to agree to hold interim federal elections. Barzel replied that his party would agree to elections--but only after Brandt had resigned. Despite the ploys and counterploys, it seemed likely that elections would be held in the fall.

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