Austria: Holzben v. Holzkopf

Austria owes the success of its postwar political balancing act, Proporz, to a happy band of anonymous voters who sportingly cast their ballots for a Socialist for the presidency, though they return the conservative People's Party in general elections. As a result, since the war Austria has had a Socialist President to offset the conservative Chancellors who headed its coalitions.

This year it looked as if Proporz might be upset. The conservative presidential candidate, suave ex-Chancellor Dr. Alfons Gorbach, 66, was a nationally known politician as well as a World War I hero with a prosthetic limb to prove it. The Socialists' lackluster Franz Jonas, 65, mayor of Vienna and a onetime Linotype operator, was not only unknown outside Vienna but had neither a university degree nor a "Herr Doktor" to his name. This inspired one comic to chortle: "Austria has a choice between a Holzbein [wooden leg] and a Holzkopf [wooden head]."

The campaign was in the standard contemporary style that Europeans still refer to as Modern American, with TV commercials, and a computer for election night. Gorbach demonstrated clear campaign superiority by 1) hiring a helicopter in order to shake hands over a 10,000-mile circuit, and 2) using Polaroid lensmen to snap him with individual voters. To no avail. Austrians prefer their own way of making a President, and Jonas won with 2,324,474 votes, or 50.69% of the total.