Kohl Wins His Gamble

By Frederick Painton

To Washington's relief, the voters choose continuity

Dominated by a host of fears, it was an election that inevitably took on the dimensions of a historic turning point. For nearly a quarter of a century, West German political contests had been fought out on the familiar ground of a broad national consensus on defense, foreign policy and economic management. This time it was different. The 43.4 million voters were split as rarely before over a spectrum of choices for the country's future, ranging from newly activist radical forces advocating drastic change f to a conservative coalition bent on ref turning to some of the virtues of a bygone era. How to remedy a flagging economy with a record 2.54 million unemployed provoked sharply different ideological approaches. The defense issue was equally divisive. Torn over the consequences of either deploying or refusing to accept a new generation of NATO missiles on their soil, West Germans were threatened by Moscow and exhorted by Washington to the point where they bitterly called it the superpower election.

Against this background of unrelieved divisiveness, it seemed natural that, almost instinctively, West Germany's voters turned to the burly, folksy, reassuring figure of Helmut Kohl, 52. Less than two hours after last Sunday's polling ended, computer projections showed Kohl's Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union, gaining an estimated 49.3% of the popular vote. Kohl's Social Democratic rival, Hans-Jochen Vogel, 57, ran second with 38.2%. The environmentalist, antinuclear Green Party polled around 5%, possibly gaining a disruptive foothold in the Bundestag. The small Free Democratic Party, Kohl's old coalition partner, defied predictions of its demise and bounced back with 6.7%.

Although the result may have left the Christian Democrats just short of an absolute majority in the Bundestag, Kohl's return to power as Chancellor was assured by the survival of the Free Democrats, who once again resumed their role as the balance of power in West German politics. Kohl's risky gamble in holding national elections six months after the collapse of the coalition, led by Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt, had paid off. Despite the existence of a widespread and vocal peace and protest movement, spearheaded by the Greens, Kohl had always maintained that there was a "silent majority" in the country in favor of his pro-NATO, free-enterprise policies.

In Washington and the capitals of West European allies, the outcome of the election was bound to be greeted with a palpable sense of relief, if only because Kohl unequivocally supports NATO's 1979 decision to install U.S. cruise and Pershing II missiles at the end of this year unless there is a breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations in Geneva. A victory by the Social Democrats under Vogel, it had been feared, might have brought into government in Bonn the currents of pacifism now churning in West German society.

Under pressure from the left wing of his own party, Vogel had been expected to refuse or delay indefinitely the deployment of the missiles, thereby giving Moscow an easy victory in the political struggle over the defense of Western Europe. Throughout the campaign, Vogel had won roars of approval when he said, "Kohl has explained that he wants a mandate to move forward with the stationing of missiles. I am asking for the mandate to do everything possible in the name of Germany to make the stationing of missiles superfluous." Vogel and other Social Democratic campaigners made clear that "everything possible" meant public pressure on the U.S. to demonstrate more flexibility with the Soviets in Geneva.

Even though Kohl won the election, the missile issue is not expected to disappear. The Greens are preparing demonstrations to block, by force if necessary, the installation of the new weapons, and West German security officials predict new left-and right-wing terrorist attacks against U.S. military targets in the country. But, at least, there is a government in place to defend the NATO decision.

As much as West Germany's allies, the nation's business community was likely to rejoice in Kohl's election. From the beginning of the campaign, Kohl had stressed pocketbook issues, warning voters that the country had been living beyond its means for too long. Industrial growth may reach no more than one-quarter of 1% in 1983. The combined federal, state and municipal government budget deficit for 1983 is projected to exceed $31 billion. Vogel had promised to cancel all the austerity measures that Kohl had taken during his five months as Chancellor prior to the election. Kohl's belt-tightening gospel was undoubtedly unpopular, but Vogel's vow to return to freer spending of dwindling government resources apparently turned out to be an unsatisfactory proposition for most voters. The newly mandated Chancellor is expected to cut where he can, weather the cries of anguish and wait for the beginning of the economic turn-around that many experts now expect.

Kohl's victory banished the specter of political uncertainty that culminated in the no-confidence parliamentary vote last October that ousted Schmidt and ended 13 years of Social Democratic rule. Schmidt's downfall was triggered when the Free Democrats, led by his Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, bolted the government coalition and joined Kohl's Christian Democrats. The Free Democrats' motive: disagreement with the Social Democrats over how to reverse the nation's declining economic fortunes. Branded as "traitors," by the SPD, the Free Democrats began a downward slide in public esteem, and for a while it seemed that they might not win the 5% of the vote necessary to hold seats in the Bundestag. If neither Kohl nor Vogel had won an absolute majority last Sunday, West Germans might have then been faced with a parliament in which the balance of power was held by the antinuclear, pacifist Greens. The latter would not support Kohl, and they had earlier declared that they would back Vogel only if he agreed to the complete denuclearization, military and commercial, of West Germany.

Thus the survival of the Free Democrats was crucial for Kohl. When an angry Schmidt challenged him last October to hold immediate elections, Kohl refused, partly because he wanted to campaign from the vantage point of power. But a delay was equally important in order to give the Free Democrats time to try to make a political comeback. Kohl also preferred to have Genscher, an experienced statesman, in his Cabinet. Otherwise the job would have been claimed by Franz Josef Strauss, 67, the bull-necked right-wing leader of the Christian Social Union, who still aspires to the chancellorship despite his humiliating defeat by Schmidt in national elections in 1980. Aside from being Kohl's most powerful rival within the coalition, Strauss is a clever, volatile politician who instinctively polarizes public opinion by his provocative hard-line declarations on such issues as defense and law-and-order.

The Free Democrats' comeback was the miracle of the election. Throughout most of the campaign, Genscher had the dubious distinction of consistently being rated as the country's least popular politician. In the end, the Free Democrats, who have barely 80,000 accredited members, squeaked back mainly as the result of the fear factor. The party's posters and candidates bore the message GERMANY NEEDS THE LIBERALS, an obvious pitch to alarmed antiGreen sentiment among middle-class voters. It was also a reference to the traditional buffer role of the Free Democrats. In coalition with the Social Democrats, the party was able to help Schmidt keep a lid on his vociferous left wing and thus maintain West German foreign policy in the mainstream of NATO. The implied promise Genscher made this time was that the Free Democrats would help Kohl offset more hard-line conservatives within the government.

Like his rivals, Vogel played upon voter fears. A series of Social Democratic newspaper advertisements across the country warned, "He who votes for Kohl will automatically get rockets; he who votes for Kohl is against the rights of women; he who votes for Kohl stands for higher rents." Early on, Vogel sought to give his candidacy an international dimension with a visit to Moscow, where he had a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov, an unusually long session for a Western opposition leader. Vogel's earlier meeting with President Reagan in Washington was more perfunctory, but it also provided the candidate with invaluable public exposure. At the same time, Vogel was moving subtly to the left on the missile issue and courting environmentalists in order to pick up votes from the Greens.

Kohl probably underestimated the full extent of public opposition to NATO's missile plan. Despite the Chancellor's faith in a silent majority, opinion surveys showed in mid-January that most West Germans were in favor of at least delaying the installation of the new weapons if the deadlock in U.S.-Soviet negotiations in Geneva persisted. The polls showed that 54% of Kohl's own supporters preferred postponement, along with 70% of the Free Democrats and 65% of the Social Democrats. Though the apparent rigidity of the U.S. negotiating position in Geneva -- the zero option under which no NATO missiles would be deployed if the Soviets agreed to dismantle some 340 SS-20 missiles already in place -- cost the Chancellor support, he never wavered in his pro-NATO policy.

Moscow made little secret of its preference for Vogel because it saw the Social Democratic leader as less likely to proceed with the missile deployment. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, first on a visit to Bonn and later in Moscow, warned the West Germans against following the U.S. lead on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. U.S. lobbying was no less obvious. On a special mission to Western Europe, Vice President George Bush defended the zero option as a moral approach to nuclear disarmament but, to help Kohl with the voters, indicated that the U.S. was prepared to be flexible in Geneva. From the White House, Reagan said it would be a "terrible setback to the cause of peace and disarmament" if a Bonn government rejected the missiles.

In the end, Kohl won because his campaign message had a greater ring of plausibility for the voters. West Germans may dream longingly of a fatherland without nuclear weapons, but in the voting booths many apparently recognized this vision as dangerously Utopian for a divided nation on the frontier with the Communist bloc. Kohl was also more credible on economic issues. He preached hard work and belt tightening, while Vogel in the last weeks of the campaign came up with the promise to launch a $3.5 billion government investment program to boost consumer spending and eventually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the ecological and energy fields.

Even in the carping political atmosphere of Bonn, it is generally agreed that Kohl has gained stature since he took over as Chancellor last October. Yet, judging from the polls, he cannot regard his victory as a sweeping mandate for missile deployment. If the U.S. and the Soviets manage to cobble a compromise deal in Geneva, it will almost certainly entail the basing of some new missiles in West Germany. Kohl will have to sell that agreement to the West German public in the face of protest and possibly even violence from opponents. On the other hand, Kohl's victory also makes the prospect of an arms agreement look better, since the Soviets were unlikely to negotiate seriously if Vogel had won.

The surge of business confidence that was expected to greet Kohl's election, however, may quickly sour as unemployment continues to climb. Above all, Kohl's most formidable task will be to walk a course that heals the divisions in West German society and to try, if possible, to restore the consensus that has kept the country running so well in the past. That, no doubt, was what the voters expected when they chose him to be the prescription for the country's political ailments.

-- By Frederick Painton.

Reported by Roland Flamini, Gary Lee and John Moody/ Bonn

With reporting by Roland Flamini, Gary Lee, John Moody This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.