Germany's Greens Bank on Fun in Election

On a recent balmy summer afternoon in Kreuzberg, Berlin's bustling Turkish neighborhood, an abundance of green T-shirts and balloons near a fruit stand hinted that something unusual was about to happen.

As out of nowhere, Claudia Roth, the Green party's national co-chair, materialized in the midst of the turmoil. Without missing a beat, she began dancing to Turkish music with local residents and party supporters. Crowding around them and adding to the mayhem, a ring of journalists from many of Germany's major media outlets scrambled to capture the action.

Roth then led the throngs into a Turkish diner shop, where she shaved meat from the giant spit while cameras hummed and whirred. It was a textbook media opportunity.

"The opposition likes to campaign at the cost of minorities," Roth told her cheering supporters. "That really kills the mood in this country."

A serious reason behind the fun

The Greens have been going out of their way to make a scene in Berlin this August to convey a simple message: We are a party that can have fun, and we are a party that still matters for the parliamentary election next month.

In the past weeks, interested citizens have been invited by the party's leadership to explore Berlin's neighborhoods on foot, on skates, and on the water -- in a solar-powered boat, of course. On these outings, participants receive an education in the Green way of life and are meant to experience first hand the "chillness" of the party.

The interested could play blitz chess with party co-chair Reinhard Bütikofer, tour the city's bars with the Green Youth or discuss the country's new prostitution law in a Berlin brothel.

Despite the "fun factor" involved in the events, the party has a serious reason for offering them. Given the current party constellations and the rise of the newly founded Left Party, the Greens need to do everything they can to make themselves apparent, said Wolfgang Donsbach, a political communications professor at Dresden's Technical University.

Somewhat off-beat campaign events, such as the Kreuzberg tour, could help the party if they reach a nationwide audience, he added. With a new edition of the current governing coalition with the Social Democrats unlikely and having been overshadowed by the upstart Left Party as the "hot new thing," Greens must raise their profile somehow or they will run the risk of irrelevancy.

Repeating previous mistakes?

It's an approach that's been (unsuccessfully) tried before. The Green party's idiosyncratic line-up of publicity events has been turning heads in Berlin and perhaps effecting an image change. But the campaign planners will have to be careful that too much mirth can damage the perception of the Greens as a party fit to govern Germany.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung recently referred to the "Fun campaign of the Eco-party," drawing a parallel to similar attempts by the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) to woo voters during the 2002 election.

The FDP garnered the moniker of "Fun Party" mostly through the antics of party chief Guido Westerwelle, who was hoping to create a new image with the ambitious goal of reaching 18 percent of the vote. But Westerwelle's shenanigans failed to grab media attention and linked the FDP with levity.

The result at the polls was certainly not a laughing matter. Despite the "Guidomobile", the flashy yellow motor home Westerwelle used to tour Germany under the motto "politics can also be fun"; despite the '18%' garishly inscribed on his shoe soles; despite his appearance on the voyeuristic TV show Big Brother; or rather, as many say, because of these silly actions, the FDP reached a disappointing 7.4 percent of the vote, putting a jarring end to the party's summer of fun.

Optimism backed by plans

This summer, the mood for the premature Bundestag election campaign is visibly more solemn. When German voters go to the polls on Sept. 18, the "fun factor" probably isn't high on their lists: The malaise surrounding record unemployment and sluggish growth preclude any campaign strategies with non-serious content.

Karl Rudolf Korte, a political scientist at the University of Duisberg-Essen in western Germany, said that the times are too dire for a "fun party."

But the Greens don't seem to follow in the FDP's footsteps, Korte added.

"They don't want to be the fun party, but perhaps lighten their image somewhat," Korte said. "They want to avoid the stigma that 'If it's Green, then it must taste bad.' They want to develop a profile of wellness."

Exuding an optimistic, positive attitude is crucial for the success of a party, Donsbach said.

The perception of a "good mood" is essential, "but it has to be supported by good policies," he said. "Only with fun, only with ballyhoo, it won't work."