INA FASSBENDER / REUTERS PARTY TIME CDU supporters carry the SPD out of North Rhine–Westphalia in a coffin.

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	After getting trounced in a regional vote and trailing badly in the polls, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder gambles his political future on a snap general election
	By ANDREW PURVIS | Berlin

Posted Sunday, May 29, 2005; 09.37 BST
Gerhard Schröder looks remarkably at ease for a man who's just called a snap election at a time when his Social Democratic Party trails by as much as 18 percentage points in the polls. Leaning back in a leather chair in an office tower overlooking the fairgrounds in Hanover, the regional capital where as Governor he started his long march to the chancellery, Schröder glances affectionately at his step-daughter Klara who is waiting patiently for him to finish the morning's business, eager to get on with a pleasant spring morning out on the town. But Schröder's cool, collected appearance is deceiving. He's facing the fight of his political life.

On May 22, the Social Democrats (SPD) got thumped by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in regional polls in North Rhine–Westphalia, a state the SPD had held for the past 39 years. It was the latest defeat in a string of losses that has left the ruling SPD in control of just five of Germany's 16 states; six years ago it had 11. The upper house of parliament is controlled by the opposition CDU; Schröder's legislative program has ground to a halt; unemployment recently crested at a postwar high of 12%; the rate of business closures has reached record levels; and the SPD has hit its lowest approval ratings since World War II. Oh, and about 92% of Germans think the SPD will lose the election, likely to be held on Sept. 18. Was Schröder, as one pundit bluntly put it, "committing suicide to avoid murder?" "Do I look that way?" Schröder joked to Time, tanned and dapper in a sharp, sky-blue shirt and green tie. "Giving up is not one of the character traits associated with me. I am not someone who throws in the towel."

Fair enough; but Schröder is rolling the dice in a huge political gamble that could bring down his government — or just possibly save its skin. In a survey published last week by the polling agency Forsa, 45% of respondents said they would vote CDU. Schröder's SPD polled just 28%, 10 points below its result in the 2002 election. In North Rhine–Westphalia, SPD supporters did not just stay home, as many feared they would; they voted for the other side. The CDU jumped almost 8 points to 45%, while the SPD lost nearly 6 points to 37%, its worst showing in 50 years. "The North Rhine–Westphalia election was a catastrophe for the SPD," Wolfgang Schäuble, CDU foreign affairs spokesman and former party chairman, said to Time. "The [SPD-Green coalition] is no longer accepted by the population."

If Schröder is in a hole, Germany is in an even deeper one. The country is still burdened by the massive costs of reunification and beset by increased competition from Eastern Europe and Asia, an aging society and an overregulated labor market. After squeaking back into office in 2002 by a margin of just 8,864 votes, Schröder accelerated the pace of reform. He cut corporate taxes, eased entry for foreign workers and reformed the pension and health-care systems. Those moves may have been economically justified, but they enraged the SPD's traditionalist left wing. "Schröder pushed through the necessary reforms against his own party's soul," says Heinrich Oberreuter, director of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing, south of Munich. "He recognized what was necessary, but the party as a whole did not." Will it ever? In the run-up to the election — and in its aftermath, whoever wins — the central question facing Germany will be whether enough people accept that the policies that made the country such a startling success for 50 years have run their course.

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