POLITICS : German Leader Pictures Himself Like Clinton

It never hurts a German politician to have a picture taken with the President of the United States, but for Social Democratic Party leader Rudolf Scharping, a shot of his White House meeting with President Clinton next week could prove particularly helpful.

Scharping, who is running hard for Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s job, likes to draw “certain parallels” between himself and the former governor of Arkansas. Scharping is nearly the same age as Clinton and heads the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Like Clinton, he is challenging a party that has been in power for 12 years, and he represents change.

“The mood now is sharply critical--throw the rascals out,” said Thomas Kielinger, editor of the Rheinischer Merkur newspaper. “Scharping stands a good chance of winning, because people are sick and tired of Kohl.”

Opinion polls give Scharping a considerable advantage over the veteran Kohl six months before the Oct. 16 vote. The highest unemployment since World War II, huge budget deficits and the high cost of German reunification--$100 billion a year--have soured Kohl’s image.

But the upstart Scharping still has an uphill battle. Germans vote for a party, rather than a person, and the left-of-center Social Democrats do not score as well in polls as Scharping himself. The party has a bitter history of public feuds--what has been called “a natural inclination to self-destruct.”

The bespectacled Scharping has his own image problems too. He is large and serious-looking in horn-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed beard, but he is, as a fellow party member once said, about “as exciting as a sleeping pill” on the stump.

Scharping was elected the youngest leader ever of his party last summer after his predecessor was forced to resign over a political scandal. The 46-year-old father of three is a jogging and bicycling enthusiast, freshly tanned from an Easter vacation on Majorca, where he went with a cycling buddy. He also is an avid fan of soccer--everyman’s game in Europe.

The candidate has been working hard to unite his party and has had some success. He has been campaigning to persuade the public and business elite that the SPD, as it is called, is politically moderate and ready to govern again. He says he is against higher taxes and will reduce public debt.

Scharping was getting good press on those points until his party presented its tax plan last month. While Kohl’s center-right Christian Democratic Union plans for a 7.5% across-the-board income tax surcharge to pay for reunification, Scharping would increase that to 10% for higher-income earners and drop it to none on low-income workers.

But when the Social Democrats suggested that everyone earning 50,000 marks a year (about $30,000) or more would be subject to the tax, newspapers such as the mass-circulation Bild Zeitung lashed out, claiming that would include carpenters, railway workers and child-care providers. When the Christian Democrats claimed it would mean higher taxes for more than half of all taxpayers, Scharping backed down.

The Christian Democrats are not likely to go down quietly. Kohl, a shrewd warhorse, is banking that Germans have had enough change with reunification and want continuity. Kohl’s campaign billboards advertise politics “without a beard.”

Scharping’s trip to Washington, like his trip to Prague last week and to Paris last November, is meant to show voters that he has an international profile. He will meet with Clinton on Tuesday to talk about economic issues, according to Social Democratic spokeswoman Dagmar Wiebusch.

And for the voters back home, surely he wants his photograph with Clinton.

The Candidate of Change

Like President Clinton, Rudolf Scharping represents change in his bid to unseat a party that has been in power for 12 years:

Born Dec. 2, 1947

Married, father of three

Member of Social Democratic party since 1966

Elected to state parliament 1975

Social Democrat chairman in state of Rhineland-Palatinate since 1985

Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate since May 21, 1991

Chairman of national Social Democratic party since June 25, 1993