Kohl Protege May Be Power Behind Throne

Even if Chancellor Helmut Kohl stages a come-from-behind victory for an unprecedented fifth term in today’s general election, many in this Rhineland enclave expect to see a new face at Germany’s helm.

That would be the visage of Kohl’s crown prince--Wolfgang Schaeuble, a man with a tongue-twisting name, little repute outside his homeland and a physical challenge that his colleagues persist in making a political issue.

Not only is there behind-the-scenes talk of a victorious Kohl handing over the reins of government to his longtime apprentice ahead of the millennium, but Schaeuble has emerged as the leading chancellor candidate in the likely event neither of the two major parties can cobble together an outright majority after what is expected to be a photo finish. Two final polls for the election published Saturday shed little new light on today’s cliffhanger vote.

While Kohl has vowed to retire rather than join forces with Social Democratic challenger Gerhard Schroeder in the event that the vote result requires a power-sharing arrangement, Schaeuble has said a grand coalition “would not be a national disaster.”

Indeed, a meeting of the center-right Christian Democratic Union and Schroeder’s center-left Social Democrats is the preferred outcome of most German voters. And Schaeuble, who for the past eight years has had to use a wheelchair, ranks higher in his countrymen’s esteem than any other politician.

Schaeuble Isn’t Letting Handicap Deter Him

Schaeuble himself gave voice to the question on the minds of many of his fellow Christian Democrats a year ago when he asked rhetorically whether a man in a wheelchair could handle the rigors of running Europe’s most powerful country and the world’s third-largest economy.

“This is a question that must be asked,” Schaeuble conceded at the time.

He has since gone on to demonstrate that the answer is an unqualified yes, at least as far as it concerns the gritty 56-year-old, who was back at his government desk five weeks after being rendered a paraplegic by a madman’s bullet.

Serious, direct and no-nonsense to the point of sternness, Schaeuble has an appeal to Germans that is often lost on outsiders. But voters here tend to rank politicians more on capability than charisma, and Schaeuble’s quick mind, physical determination and commitment to the country are qualities that strike a chord with Germans, especially in these times of dramatic social change.

Schaeuble staged a superhuman comeback to return to his job as interior minister in November 1990 and oversee the tumultuous internal upheavals during the vital early years of Germany’s reunification. Since late 1991, he has served as CDU faction leader in the thump and thunder of the federal parliament, the Bundestag.

Now, as the struggling party maneuvers to get Kohl reelected, Schaeuble’s vaunted standing with the voters is being subtly called into action.

In an interview with the weekly Die Woche last month, Schaeuble hinted that Kohl might not finish his four-year term if he is reelected--raising the prospect of Schaeuble’s taking over the chancellory before 2000.

Kohl May Pass Reins Just Ahead of 2000

Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel reported that CDU strategists had confided to the newspaper that Kohl plans to serve out Germany’s term in the European Union presidency next year and oversee the transfer of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin, then pass the reins to Schaeuble just ahead of 2000.

By then, point out the pundits, Kohl will have reigned over not only German reunification but the creation of a “United States of Europe” with next year’s introduction of a common currency, the euro.

In a recent interview at his party’s parliamentary headquarters here, Schaeuble sought to play down his prospects for replacing Kohl in the next year or two, repeatedly emphasizing that the CDU strategy for a fifth straight election victory was to run Kohl on his record as the “chancellor of unity.”

But CDU advisors say, sotto voce, that Kohl already has secured his place in history and that, facing a 70th birthday in April 2000, he is inclined to make a dignified early exit.

Schaeuble himself strikes the pose of supporting another full term for Kohl, in keeping with the chancellor’s fierce public insistence that he will serve out his term if reelected.

But Germany’s ubiquitous political analysts and voters alike suspect that a midterm succession scenario has been agreed to, at least in principle, between Kohl and Schaeuble.

Kohl’s CDU still trailed the Social Democrats on the eve of the election. But because as much as 30% of the electorate was still undecided within hours of when the voting stations were to open, the election is widely considered as unpredictable as a coin toss.

The last days of ardent campaigning pushed Schaeuble into the limelight as the chancellor-in-waiting, not only as a likely mid-term successor if Kohl wins but as a compromise chancellor who would be acceptable to all factions if the CDU edges past the Social Democrats but is nonetheless forced into a grand coalition.

German media have long debated openly whether Schaeuble is physically fit to govern. But in the closing days of the campaign, those doubts disappeared.

In an interview with the October issue of German-language Playboy magazine, Schaeuble is cast as a tough political fighter who strikes fear in the hearts of opponents. A full-page color photograph catches a casually clad Schaeuble on northern Germany’s Friesian coast, where he takes his family each year for summer vacation.

The interview covers politics and coping with his paralysis, and the presentation of Schaeuble in jeans and boat shoes, with sunglasses and a knotted sweater hanging cavalierly around his neck and shoulders, seems aimed at showing that he is at ease in any surroundings in his wheelchair.

Schaeuble’s unwavering drive to prove his abilities hasn’t always won notice. He has faced constant and unapologetic speculation from the German press and fellow politicians about his abilities.

There were worried whispers among fellow Cabinet officials when Schaeuble determinedly wheeled back to work so soon after being shot by a psychologically disturbed spectator at an Oct. 12, 1990, rally.

Bavarian Gov. Edmund Stoiber once prophesied that Schaeuble’s handicap meant he would never be accepted as leader of Germany, and opposition Social Democrat Hans-Jochen Vogel is said to have inflicted personal injury when he observed that Schaeuble’s fate had made him “very hard.”

“Can he take it?” the weekly Der Spiegel asked bluntly on its cover when Schaeuble was named to head the CDU faction in parliament--largely considered second only to the chancellor in the ruling party power structure.

Many Germans Find Schaeuble Fit to Rule

In an article four years later titled “No Meager Achievement,” Der Spiegel’s capital correspondent, Dirk Koch, followed Schaeuble on a plane trip to Britain to chronicle the politician’s defiant pursuit of independent mobility. Schaeuble so disliked being carried aboard planes and other means of transport, Koch wrote, that he had a battery-driven stair-climbing device made that allows him to negotiate stairs while still in his wheelchair. He also has had a hand-propelled tricycle produced that allows him to ride across the hills and dales of his hometown, Gengenbach, in the southwest state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

As Schaeuble’s public profile grew and Kohl repeatedly made clear that he expected his most trusted colleague to succeed him, the INRA social research group of Moelln polled Germans on whether they considered Schaeuble fit to be chancellor. A convincing 57% replied positively, and Schaeuble’s standing has only improved in the intervening two years.

The monthly rankings of Germany’s political figures by the Bielefeld-based Emnid Institute place Schaeuble on the unrivaled pinnacle of public admiration with a 70% positive rating, followed by Kohl challenger Schroeder with 66%. Kohl placed 15th in the latest survey, with 42% approval.

Schaeuble contended in an interview with the weekly magazine Stern last year that he is unruffled by inquiries about how his handicap influences his political life. But he makes short work of the subject.

In the interview this month at party headquarters, Schaeuble was asked if his injury and confinement had changed his outlook on the world.

“Possibly, on specific issues, it has made me more sensitive. That may be,” Schaeuble responded. “But the fundamental directions of my political views, my orientation as a centrist committed to European integration, has not changed in any way because of my handicap.”

Stern, in raising the issue of Schaeuble’s fitness for the leadership, called on readers to reflect on the accomplishments of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Despite FDR’s physical limitations from childhood illness, the 32nd president of the United States “lastingly changed his country in a way no predecessor or successor has,” Stern Editor Werner Funk wrote.

For the vast majority of Germany’s undecided voters, who seem to want both a new face and the security of the status quo, Schaeuble’s determined service to the nation and his traditional family life might appeal, since Germans are largely conservative.

In these times of great uncertainty in Germany and around the world, Kohl’s long-serving understudy offers both continuity and change. As a God-fearing father of four whose wife of 29 years, Ingeborg, has publicly lamented his decision to take on such huge professional burdens, Schaeuble may be a more comforting follower to the solid, if stodgy, Kohl than would be the four-times-married Schroeder, who has no experience in foreign policy.