Wagnerian Opening

West German politicians were off and railing against each other last week in a Wagnerian opening to their eight-week national election campaign. Chancellor Willy Brandt lost his temper at a press conference. Karl Schiller, who had resigned as Brandt's Economics and Finance Minister in June, quit the Social Democratic Party completely, accusing his Cabinet successor, Helmut Schmidt, of "demagogic downplaying" of inflation. Another former Finance Minister, Christian Social Union Leader Franz Josef Strauss, likened Brandt's views on price increases to those of a simple hausfrau.

The West German press joined in with some tuba notes of its own. Die

Welt wondered who could possibly believe rumors that Brandt would leave West Germany if he lost the election. But Brandt may have caused himself more discomfort by telling Der Spiegel that corruption was involved in some of the defections from his government last spring. Asked who had done the corrupting, Brandt replied: "This will all come out eventually."

Pressed by newsmen to justify his charges, Brandt finally exploded. With his face reddening and his rasping voice rising, he exclaimed: "My subjective conviction was and is that in the case of attempted and completed party switches, financial things also played a role." As for it "all coming out eventually," Brandt explained weakly that he had been expressing a hope.

It was a stumbling start for Brandt, and one from which he must recover quickly, since the party's whole campaign is built around the Chancellor's personal popularity. The Social Democrats plan to capitalize on Brandt's achievements in foreign affairs, most notably his 1971 Nobel Peace Prize and his innovative Ostpolitik. By election day on Nov. 19, he may even have achieved his biggest diplomatic success to date: a drafted and initialed treaty with East Germany. Another success was an agreement last week to establish diplomatic relations with Peking.

Opposition Leader Rainer Barzel, by contrast, is not as popular as his party. He is a deft political infighter who impresses many West Germans as being too clever by half. Barzel was busy delivering statistic-laden speeches calculated to convey the impression of an issue-oriented thinker. His major campaign issue will likely be inflation, which is running at 5.45% so far this year. Now Barzel's attack has been immensely strengthened by Schiller. A brilliant economist but always a prickly political bedfellow, Schiller was Brandt's "election locomotive" in 1969. Now he is steaming at the Chancellor from the opposite direction.

At the dissolution of Parliament two weeks ago, the governing S.D.P.-Free Democratic Party coalition and the opposition parties were at a standoff, each holding 248 seats. The stalemate had brought West Germany's legislative process to a halt. To bring about an election, under the West German constitution, Brandt had to call for a vote of confidence in the Bundestag and deliberately lose it. Now he has the election, but he is no certain winner. The most recent public-opinion polls, taken at the start of September, showed the government parties with 50% of the vote and the opposition with 48%. Clearly both sides will be trying desperately to gain a decisive advantage; otherwise the election might end in a tie and put Brandt and Barzel back where they started.

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