What if the Green Party Wasn't Green?

Germany’s most beloved politician started a campaign bus tour Tuesday to win votes for a party that has been anything but loved of late.

Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who has topped politician popularity polls for more than a year now, started a 42-town tour to kick off the do-or-die portion of the Green’s parliamentary campaign.

After four years as the junior partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s government, the Greens are charged with mustering up enough votes to stay on as a viable coalition partner for Schröder’s Social Democrats.

Recent polls have indicated the Greens will most likely get between 5 and 7 percent of the vote, meaning they would just barely clear the 5 percent mark needed to have representation in parliament.

The party hasn’t been helped by recent scandals involving Green members of parliament and their use of business frequent flier miles for personal use. Rising star Cem Özdemir resigned following revelations that he received a loan with generous interest rates from a lobbyist and also used the frequent flier miles earned on business trips for personal vacations.

Newspapers revealed Green party prominents like parliamentary group leader Rezzo Schlauch and Environmental Minister Jürgen Trittin abused miles as well. But the two refused to resign.

The Greens aren’t good, but who’s better?

How much of an effect the scandals will have on a party plagued with deeper problems concerning structure and future direction remains to be seen, say Green party experts.

“They may be rescued by the fact that towards other parties there is a growing cynicism,” said Jochen Hippler, a lecturer at the University of Duisberg and former Green party advisor, in an interview.

Scandal, or the legacy of scandal, continues to shadow both Schröder’s SPD and the conservative Christian Democratic Union, who are behind chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber.

For many voters and party observers, the fact that the Green Party has been touched by scandal does nothing more than confirm the party’s evolution from ideological outsider to member of the political establishment.

“It just confirms people’s suspicion that politicians are corrupt and predatory,” University of Göttingen professor Peter Lösche told DW-WORLD. “It’s just an indicator that the Greens are a boring, normal party.”

Peaceniks and Nike shoes

That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, when environmental activists and assorted members of the leftist movement first cobbled the party together.

The peace movement that took hold in Germany in the early 1980s rocketed the Greens from outside agitators into the seats of state parliaments. But the Greens maintained their roots and the scrappiness that many of their loyal voters had come to adore.

Fischer, who occupied houses in Frankfurt in the 1960s and tangled with police in street riots, wore Nike high tops, jeans and a blazer to his swearing in as environmental minister of the state of Hesse in 1985.

In an indication of the change the party has undergone over the years, Fischer wore what has become his customary three-piece suit to address Green Party delegates on German involvement in the US invasion of Afghanistan. In an even clearer sign of change from the pacifist image, Fischer argued passionately for troop deployment and the continuation of the coalition government with Schröder’s Social Democrats.

Base? What Base?

The delegates agreed. Weeks later, the first German soldiers and seamen were sent off to Kuwait, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan, and pundits predicted the end of the party through a revolt by the remaining members of the party base.

But the revolt didn’t occur. The base, it turned out, had been trickling away from the party for a long time already.

“So much has changed in the last, at least, 10 years,” said Christian Schmidt, satirist and author of Wir sind die Wahnsinnigen. Joschka Fischer und seine Frankfurter Gang (We are the Madmen: Joschka Fischer and his Frankfurt Gang), in an interview. “The voter base of the Greens has changed with the Green parliamentarians and functionaries.”

The Green Party members that entered the government in 1998 were, unlike their predecessors, ready to compromise for their environmental and social goals.

They voted to send German soldiers to Kosovo, but also won a pledge from atomic industry leaders to completely phase out nuclear energy in Germany in the next 20 years. They’ve had to water down their liberal immigration law, but won passage of an environmental tax on fuel.

The old Greens that helped form the party began to slip away. They argued Green leaders compromised too much on the nuclear pact and sold their pacifist soul with votes to send soldiers Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Abandoning past, where's the future?

The result is a party that has abandoned its past without defining a definite future, say observers. The Greens have lost ground in the last 18 non-federal elections in Germany and new members have been hard to come by.

“What you have to hope for, if you are a policy planner for the Green party, is that people will vote for you, even if they don’t know why,” said Hippler, who already 14 years ago penned a book with the title Sind die Grünen noch zu retten? (Can the Greens be Saved?). “There is not a serious base, but there is a slight chance they will be able to survive the elections.”

Lösche is not so dour in his prediction.

“There are a lot of people, like yuppies, that are attracted by Fischer, or by their policies and will vote for the Green party this election,” Lösche said. “They’ll get between 6.5 and 7 percent.”