Photo Finish?

The billboard posters were getting weatherbeaten, the speakers were getting hoarse, and the West German people were getting, well, perhaps a little bored. The 1965 election campaign was ending at last. It had been a listless process, and perhaps out of sheer resignation, the voters seemed about evenly divided. The latest polls showed Chancellar Ludwig Erhard's Christian Democratic Union and Mayor Willy Brandt's Social Democratic Party each with 45% of the decided vote--but there was a small catch: 1 West German voter in 4 still stolidly listed himself as "undecided."

It was not for lack of effort on the part of the candidates. Erhard had covered 16,000 miles by train and car, and had expounded his plan for a formierte Gesellschaft (harmonious society) before nearly a million voters. He was, of course, campaigning equally on his party's record of prosperity and on his personal reputation as the very epitome of the Wirtschaftswunder. "I am one of you, grown out of the missions of the German people," he proclaimed "I stand before you as a cross section of the German people."

Grand Coalition? The big question was whether his image might have begun to tire on the voters, some of whom can scarcely recall a Germany that was not prosperous. Certainly if they chose to vote for Brandt, it would have to be for the sake of a new face, since the Social Democrats' platform is virtually the same as the Christian Democrats' and Brandt's campaign oratory has been along the lines of "Those of you who have become owners of a little car have worked for it. Ludwig Erhard didn't give it to you, though that's how he makes it sound."

With the parties apparently headed for a photo finish, the minds of politicians were racing ahead to the possibility that for the first time since 1949, the Christian Democrats would need more than the help of a mere splinter coalition partner to rule the Bundestag. That raised the fascinating question of a political alliance unthought of a few years ago but now grudgingly considered by such influential figures as ex-Chancellor Konrad Adenauer--a "grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and the socialists. This would leave the C.D.U's present coalition partner, the splinter Free Democratic Party, alone in opposition, and could happen only if the Christian Democrats' share of the vote drops sharply from the 45% they won in 1961, when the Social Democrats rose to 36%. Erhard flatly rejects such a "red-black" coalition, but if the possibility of it arose, there would have to be dickering far more interesting and contested than anything that took place in the campaign.

Der Dicke did not for one moment accept the idea that he would ever have to deal with the socialists, for he was amiably confident of another substantial victory for his Christian Democrats. In his private railroad car, sipping a Scotch and soda and clutching a Black Wisdom cigar at the end of a day's campaigning last week, he was firmly telling journalists that "that little fire of a grand coalition has been stamped out."

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