Floods a gift for Schroeder's struggling campaign

The floodwaters which swamped eastern Germany last week have washed away some of the problems plaguing Gerhard Schroeder's woeful re-election campaign, giving the chancellor an unexpected chance to shine four weeks before the ballot.

Although Schroeder's Social Democrats have trailed the conservatives in voter surveys by steady margins for months, his chances of retaining office got an improbable boost thanks to the flood disaster that put German cities under water last week.

Political analysts said the natural disaster that has claimed several German lives had succeeded in wiping away the summer-long focus on Schroeder's error-filled campaign.

The floodwaters gave the media-savvy incumbent a chance to lead the nation and distract from rising unemployment, an ugly regional party funding scandal, the firing of his defence minister, and the messy removal of Deutsche Telekom's chairman.

"Natural disasters are always an advantage for the person in office and the parties holding power," said Dietmar Herz, political scientist at Erfurt University.

"Schroeder has been handed a golden opportunity to present himself as a crisis manager," he added. "The public tends to rally around their leaders in times of crises. Schroeder got a chance to show what he can do."

During a visit to the flooded region of Saxony last week, Schroeder pledged speedy and unbureaucratic aid to the victims of the flooding. Clad in a green raincoat and knee-high boots, Schroeder inspected the devastated town of Grimma.

"It will take a major national effort to repair the damage caused," said Schroeder, hoping to still be in power for that effort after the September 22 election. "The whole nation will have to help."

Cancelling other election campaign events, Schroeder held an unprecedented two news conferences in Berlin on Wednesday, before and after his visit. He addressed the media again on Thursday to discuss the floods.

"The floods should offer his campaign some badly needed help," said Peter Loescke, political scientist at Goettingen University. "He can show the public he's a mover and shaker."

His challenger Edmund Stoiber, whose conservative Christian Democrats have led in polls by a margin of five to seven percentage points for most of the year, was at first caught off guard by the disaster and idled on holiday.

He is now trying to catch up but is finding it difficult to match the media attention the chancellor can attract.

"The opposition is going to have to live with the fact that this moment belongs to the executive branch of the government," wrote the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

"This is the chance for the incumbent to use the tools of his office to win points with the voters," the paper added.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper went a step further, declaring "Weather saves Schroeder" in an editorial headline.

"No one seems to care anymore about the recent affairs that hurt Schroeder," the paper wrote.

Floods have helped boost the careers of past political leaders in Germany. Helmut Schmidt was a little-known state interior minister in Hamburg in 1962 when devastating floods that killed 315 people inundated the northern German port city on the Elbe river.

Schmidt's strong leadership - indefatigable efforts to help keep dikes reinforced while soothing the nerves of the frightened public with regular updates - catapulted him into the national spotlight and he later became chancellor.

Similarly, during floods in eastern Germany along the Oder river five years ago, little-known local environment minister Matthias Platzek used similar tactics. He is now Brandenburg's state premier and expected to move to the national stage soon.

"There is something mystical about fighting floods in Germany," said Herz from the University of Erfurt. "Throughout history and in literature, leaders who kept their nerves during floods and kept people calm have become heroes."

Two pollsters, however, said they doubted Schroeder would be able to extract many votes in September from the floods.

"Unknown figures such as Schmidt and Platzek raised their profile with good crisis management, but well-known figures like Schroeder probably cannot gain much," said Renate Koecher from the Allensbach polling institute.

She noted former Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited the victims of the 1997 floods but still lost the election a year later.

"Schroeder may succeed in shifting attention away from some of his problems for a while with the floods," said Matthias Jung of the Electoral Research Group. "But it is hard to see the floods still having an impact in five weeks."