Projecting Seriousness as Well as Star Quality

BERLIN —  Slippery. Media showman. Light on substance. An incurable flirt.

The qualities being ascribed to Chancellor-elect Gerhard Schroeder by his country’s mostly flattering media might validate the image he has sought to project as the Bill Clinton of Germany, but they are hardly words of comfort to those who swallowed hard before this week’s elections and opted for change.

Schroeder ended the 16-year reign of Helmut Kohl by waging the first German campaign built more around a candidate’s charisma than around his platform content.

Now, a victim of his own success in selling a glitzy personality, the 54-year-old politician who will soon take over Europe’s largest economy is busy trying to convince fellow Germans that he is as much chancellor material as charmer.

Britain’s respected weekly the Economist spoke to concerns about Schroeder’s depth as a statesman when it recently splashed across its cover: “Would you buy a used car from Gerhard Schroeder?” And some Americans may have difficulty changing the impression they have gained of Schroeder as a slick operator because of his physical resemblance to actor Robert Preston, who played the charming con artist in “The Music Man.”

Many Germans who, like Schroeder, were reared in the post-World War II era have been celebrating the impending change of chancellors and their country’s belated contribution to the European shift leftward over the past decade.

But in a bow to those of older generations who may be gasping at the prospect of a leadership uniting Schroeder’s left-of-center Social Democrats with the once-radical Greens party, the next chancellor of Germany has directed his first steps at appearing a man of the political middle and a trusted follower in the foreign policy path of the departing Kohl.

Schroeder is scheduled to make his first post-victory visit abroad today--to Paris, to meet with French President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. In choosing France, long Germany’s closest European ally, for his foreign debut, Schroeder reinforced his campaign promise to maintain strong relations with tried and true friends.

More problematic for Schroeder than continuity in the foreign affairs arena will be delivering on his vows to lower unemployment and taxes. His reluctance to provide details of how he will do that prompted the popular weekly Der Spiegel to describe him in a recent article as being of “soft-soap malleability.”

Supporters and critics alike attributed his campaign’s success to its media savvy, and his openness to both foreign and German journalists proved a winning strategy for shaping an attractive image.

On Monday, at his first postelection news conference, Schroeder betrayed none of the exhaustion he must have felt after the hard-fought campaign, and instead smiled and winked at familiar faces in the throng of journalists cramming the government press center in Bonn.

While he strove to appear more serious and businesslike than he did on the campaign trail, he failed to control his inclination to be playful.

When one question touched on a minor tax issue, the blue-eyed lawyer from Lower Saxony couldn’t help but use his answer as a pretext to hint at his plan to appoint Social Democratic Party chief Oskar Lafontaine to the important post of finance minister. In what the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel called “a look that spoke volumes,” Schroeder flashed a quick smile at Lafontaine, seated to his right, after noting that decisions about taxes will depend on the views of whoever is named to the post after coalition negotiations with the Greens.

The chancellor-elect’s propensity for breaking with tradition is a characteristic shared with many younger Germans, and his tendency to pick up and discard policies is regarded here as evidence of flexibility more than of a lack of commitment. A self-professed Marxist and student protester in the 1960s, Schroeder has clearly mellowed with age and moved toward the political mainstream.

But one quality sets Schroeder worlds apart from his “twin,” Clinton: Despite his messy divorces, blended families and rakish indulgence in flirtation, he faces little scrutiny of his personal life.