Caesar

in protest against the status quo; SchrÐ"¶der was (probably) on his way out as chancellor, and the political classes were headed for weeks of confusion after a snap election he had called himself. Looking for "clarity," he'd delivered his nation into the fog. Embarrassing, right? But there was one thing for SchrÐ"¶der to celebrate, and he was giddy with it on television just after the polls closed: Angela Merkel hadn't won. Of course, strictly speaking she hadn't exactly lost either. But just weeks before the election pundits and pollsters were still expecting her to wipe the floor with SchrÐ"¶der. Schadenfreude over her failure to do so affected the chancellor like cocaine.

In fact he was so high on life during the election night debate, that FDP liberal party leader Guido Westerwelle asked SchrÐ"¶der on live TV if he had been drinking. The chancellor has since officially stated that he hadn't touched a drop, but has admitted that his excitable behavior was slightly irregular.

He was still giddy enough two days later to announce that if he couldn't be chancellor, a grand coalition between the SPD and Merkel's CDU/CSU was out of the question. The implication being that the vibrant, worldly, suave Herr SchrÐ"¶der would certainly not serve under a dowdy "Chancellor Merkel." His party, of course, lacked the seats in parliament to make him chancellor, but his party was also cooking up petty technical ways to deny the CDU/CSU their slight majority -- and Germany, to the world's bemusement, began to resemble Florida in November 2000. But at least it has given the German press a field day.

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes that the chancellor has given Germans a whole new language. "The 'loser' of an election is now known as the 'winner,' as long as he's a Social Democrat, had expected to do much worse, and is named SchrÐ"¶der." The editors go on to trash SchrÐ"¶der's main tactic for clinging to power, which would involve dissolving a traditional rule allowing Merkel's CDU to sit as a single parliamentary party with its Bavarian counterpart, the CSU. "The methods SchrÐ"¶der and some of his cronies have resorted to are not just dishonest but frivolous."

The conservative Die Welt reminds readers that undemocratic fiddling with the parliamentary process was responsible for destabilizing the Weimar Republic. The paper wonders if Gerhard SchrÐ"¶der can be taken seriously after his giddy performance in front of the cameras on Sunday. "German politics seem to have developed a dangerous recklessness or at best a naÐ"Їve wish to experiment," writes the paper. "Evidently some politicians, above all the chancellor, have succumbed to the illusion that Germany, as a result of its postwar history, is inherently stable."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung looks at SchrÐ"¶der's chumminess with Russian President Vladimir Putin and wonders if some of Putin's autocratic methods haven't rubbed off. Not only has SchrÐ"¶der