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Merkel may pay for aide's tax gaffesBy Kristina Cooke for CNN YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSSPECIAL REPORT
(CNN) -- "The candidate is a businessman. He is a real person, not a politician. He has practical experience of how the economy works. He creates jobs every day." These words were spoken with conviction by a young CDU campaigner trying to drum up support for her party's candidate in a beer-garden in Templin, Angela Merkel's hometown. She is having little success persuading a group of middle-aged unemployed men having an afternoon beer, but the Christian Democrats (CDU) are going all out on the strategy of using "real businessmen" to lend credibility to their economic policies. They have run into some difficulties. Co-opting non-partisan businessmen into the election campaign strategy is not a new one. Schroeder himself was once known as the "comrade of the bosses." But the problems arise when these "real people" do not tow the party line. Former Siemens CEO Heinrich von Pierer was not so long ago a key member of Schroeder's pool of top managers. Now he has crossed over to Merkel's team -- and has been made her chief economic adviser. It may have seemed like a Merkel-coup at first, but last week, just days after his appointment to this high-profile position von Pierer, caused a media storm when he called for an extension of the life of nuclear power stations by 60 years. Heinrich von Pierer is, however, not Merkel's only worry. Her shadow finance minister Paul Kirchhof, an academic, former judge and tax expert, quickly became a target for the Social Democrats when he talked of radical economic reform policies including a flat-rate tax of 25 percent and abolition of tax loopholes which went far beyond those officially proposed by the CDU. He did not stop there -- last week Kirchhof called for a radically reformed pensions system, which would include a mandatory savings scheme. This was a further deviation from the CDU election program, which prompted Merkel, according to a local newspaper in Cologne (Kölner Stadt Anzeige) to attempt to "muzzle" Kirchhof. In his speech at the SPD convention last week, Gerhard Schroeder mocked Kirchhof, who he referred to as "that professor from Heidelberg." He highlighted another CDU gaffe -- when a prominent member of the CDU, Michael Meister, was asked to work out the average tax of an unmarried secretary according to Kirchhof's model, the answer was radically different to that in Kirchhof's own calculations. Kirchhof said his model tax calculations were based on a "mathematical average secretary." According to the calculations, this "mathematical average secretary" was neither married nor single -- but married to a "certain percentage point," and she would have 1.3 children. "Is this the kind of man you want in charge of your taxes?" asked Schroeder. Jörg Krämer, chief economist at Germany's Hypovereinsbank, told the Financial Times the problem with someone like Kirchhof was that he represents "pure principles and that is probably the most dangerous thing you can do in politics." Different approachesGerhard Schroeder also has his tales to tell about businessmen and politics. In 1998, Schroeder promised Jost Stollmann, a successful entrepreneur, the post as his economic minister. After the election, however, Stollmann declined, saying that his power in the job would be too limited. Merkel's chief economic adviser Heinrich von Pierer accepted the different approaches of politics and business in a comment made to the Financial Times three years ago. "The mechanics of politics and how you arrive at a result is a bit different from a company. In politics things are a lot more complicated. You need a majority. You do not need a majority in my job. We can make decisions in a weekend if we need to. If necessary we can decide in 24 hours." Political outsourcing of economics to those who really understand the world of business may seem like a good idea, but Merkel is finding it difficult to reign in some members of her campaign team in an environment where every remark can win or lose votes. 
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