NOBODY'S RIGHT, IF EVERYBODY'S WRONG:

None of the above: A depressing German election campaign comes to a close (Times of London, September 21, 2002 )

Gerhard Schroeder opted to appear at his final major party rally in Dortmund last night alongside Gunter Grass, the Nobel prize-winning author, and Goran Persson, the Swedish Prime Minister. That choice was appropriate, for the Chancellor's campaign has been a work of fiction and if it has had any theme at all, it has been, like that of the soggy Swedish Social Democrats, an unthinking defence of the status quo. [...]

Edmund Stoiber, the Christian Democrat candidate for Chancellor, could and should have directed his fire squarely on economic stagnation. He has instead conducted himself in a staggeringly inept manner. He has provided no compelling sense of urgency on the questions that matter most to Germany's future and has too easily been seduced by the prospect of scoring cheap points by lashing out at unpopular minorities. In truth, he has not even done that effectively. Herr Schroeder's record is such that a neutral should have felt able to endorse the opposition if only on a 'time for a change' basis. The performance of the Christian Democrats means that this low hurdle has not been cleared.

One has to be pessimistic about the prospects for Europe not because of the Left, which has remained relatively unchanged for decades, but because of the absence of any American-style conservative parties. The parties of the Right in Europe make no argument in favor of reducing government and taxes, no case for a return to Judeo-Christian morality and beliefs, no attempt to address the precipitous decline in population growth; choosing instead to accept all of the pathologies that are destroying European culture from within and to try to blame immigrants for destroying it from without. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 21, 2002 6:25 AM