West Germany Candidate for a Confident Time

By Michael S. Serrill

Few would have thought it possible just six months ago. Chancellor Helmut Kohl was then widely mocked as the most uninspired of politicians. But here he was last week, giving a campaign speech to a shouting, stomping, standing- room-only crowd in the city of Saarbrucken. Among his most enthusiastic supporters: hundreds of young people who waved flags and sparklers as the heavyset, bespectacled Chancellor made his way through the throng of 9,000 to the podium. After Kohl spoke, a spontaneous chorus of "Helmut! Helmut!" filled the room.

As West Germany's national election campaign drew to a close this week, the ) Chancellor's reception was ardent everywhere his helicopter touched down. Political analysts predicted that Kohl, 56, would ride his newfound popularity to a second four-year term when voters cast their ballots this Sunday. The Allensbach poll forecast that Kohl's conservative coalition of the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union and the Free Democratic Party would win 53% of the vote, compared with 36.7% for the Social Democrats and 9.5% for the environmentalist Greens.

Still, the applause on the campaign trail is directed less at the sometimes bumbling Kohl himself than at what he represents: a newly proud and prosperous West Germany that looks to the future with more confidence than at any other time since World War II. Indeed, the waning of Germany's postwar angst fits perfectly with Kohl's folksy, optimistic style. "I'm convinced that we can solve any problems with reason, courage and patience," he told 5,000 beer- drinking backers at a stop in Passau. "All we need is the inner strength to decide that's what we want."

Kohl's campaign has received a huge boost from the powerful West German economy. Inflation has been so thoroughly conquered that German prices are now falling at an annual rate of 1.2%. Unemployment, still high by European standards, has dropped from 10.4% in January 1986 to a current rate of 8.9%. Kohl's Christian Democrats boast that some 600,000 jobs have been created in the past three years, half of them in 1986. All in all, West Germans appear to be as comfortable and self-satisfied as they have ever been. Says Joachim Fest, co-publisher of the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "For the first time, this land has everything."

Kohl has openly appealed to this sense of well-being: his warmly nationalistic speeches urge the voters to congratulate themselves for the surging economy. The back-patting theme is particularly effective with younger listeners. "The Germans have worked hard here for 40 years, and I think we deserve some recognition for that," says Student Hans Baumgartner, 21. "Our history is a deep wound, but wounds have to heal."

As Kohl has thrived, the campaign of the opposition Social Democrats has fallen as flat as the party's slogan, "Let justice reign and not social coldness." Social Democratic Leader Johannes Rau has hammered away at the obvious issues: the continued unemployment of 2.2 million workers, a government tax-reform proposal that would chiefly benefit the wealthy, and , cuts in social spending. Declares Rau: "I read the business section of the paper, and I see that we're doing great. But then I read my mail."

The electorate, however, seems far more interested in stability and continuity than in new social programs. "Social justice isn't particularly relevant for most Germans these days," says Hartmut Brauer, a judicial administrator and a Social Democratic politician in Schweinfurt.

For all his current strength, Kohl very nearly missed the chance to lead West Germany's new era of good feeling. Under his leadership the Christian Democrats lost ground in seven of ten state elections between October 1982 and June 1986. The Chancellor's political future seemed uncertain after he met President Reagan in 1985 at the German military cemetery in Bitburg, where 49 members of the Nazi SS are buried. Kohl was threatened with prosecution last year for allegedly perjuring himself during testimony concerning the suspected bribery of public officials by the Flick industrial group. Things began turning around for Kohl last spring, when he was cleared of complicity in the Flick affair and the Christian Democrats won a narrow but important victory in Lower Saxony.

Kohl nonetheless remains prone to the damaging gaffe. Party strategists winced two weeks ago, when he accused East Germany of holding 2,000 political prisoners in jails and "concentration camps." That allusion to the Nazi era, combined with some tasteless patriotic rhetoric, made some Kohl supporters nervous. The Chancellor's final campaign swing last week thus found him paddling back to safer shores. Said he: "Beyond all party political differences, we owe our friends, our allies and all our neighbors a clear, constant and reliable policy."

Constancy and reliability are, of course, just what the West German public admires about Helmut Kohl, and why it is likely to give him a large vote of confidence at the polls. Kohl may not be the most elegant or articulate of leaders, but if he wins as strongly as predicted, he could begin his second term with prospects for as much prestige and power as any Chancellor has enjoyed in the postwar era.

With reporting by James L. Graff/Saarbrucken and William McWhirter/Bonn