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PASTOR'S REPORT, July 11, 1979
Page 15
"He /Strauss7 is accorded either warmest sympathies or flaming hatred. He
is stylized-as savior or as spoiler ....he is accused of being a demagogue
possessed by ambition, a man of power who served his apprenticeship under
Machiavelli and who jettisons all morality from politics. On his march
into the chancellery he has to study the high art of balance, moderation
and self control."
The Times Will Determine the Man
There are some West Germans who describe Franz-Josef Strauss as a StehaufÂ
maennchen, one of those tumbler-toys, rounded and weighted at the bottom,
which, no matter how often knocked over, bounces right back again. His
career is speckled with incidents, such as the "Spiegel affair" of 1962,
that would have sent most other politicians packing into retirement. Yet
here he is, as John Dornberg writes in the International Herald Tribune
(June 12,
19 79),
"back in the limelight making what appears to be a final
all-or-nothing bid for national power."
Yet, despite Strauss' flare for oratory, it will probably be the direction
of world events over the next year, more than anything else, that will
pave his pathway to power. Strauss himself has curiously seemed to believe
such could be the case. Over eight years ago, in May, 1971, Strauss told
der Spiegel: "I hope the German people will never be so bad off that they
think they have to elect me federal chancellor."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau