I spent a bit of time this morning reading about former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, prompted by comparisons with Obama on receiving the Peace Prize. (Brandt received it in 1971 after articulating a policy of Neue Ostpolitik - engagement with the Communist East, but before substantial tangible progress had been made.)
From the Time "Man of the Year" story on him in 1971:
The setting: The Old Jewish Ghetto, Warsaw, December, 1970: His broad, ruggedly handsome face etched with lines of concern, West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt walks slowly to the simple granite slab that memorializes the 500,000 Jews from the city's ghetto who were massacred by the Germans during World War II. For a moment he stands with bowed head, enveloped in silence except for the soft hiss of two gas-fed candelabra. Then, as if to atone for Germany's sins against its neighbors, Brandt falls to his knees. "No people," as Willy Brandt has said, "can escape from their history."
For Obama's sake, I hope neither his near-term political situation nor longer-term career do not mirror Brandt's. Brandt's chancellorship was the most dramatic of postwar Germany. Following the Peace Prize and efforts to implement Neue Ostpolitik, he faced a number of defections from his party and barely survived a vote of no confidence, thanks in part to bribery by Stasi agents. He was ultimately forced to resign when his long-term assistant and close friend was outed as a spy for the East Germans. The Guillaume affair makes the Lewinsky affair look like, well, just a day in the life of Silvio Berlusconi.
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