It's amazing that Schroeder is still in power. His most serious concern is his hair dye. He once threatened to sue some of the European press outside Germany for speculation about his hair dye. He's had 4 or 5 wives, and allegedly a mistress, and while that's more of a private matter of course, it's a reflection on the fact that he's a dabbler who isn't very earnest about what he says. Germany needs many reforms. Obviously, someone on the Left might have been better able to reform labor and such than someone on the Right. But Schroeder has managed to botch everything as far as I can tell. His one significant moment was also a big disgrace because he abused for his own gain the one nation that was for German reunification in the early 90's, a nation that stood by the Germans through the Cold War, a nation that fed the Germans after WW II and WW I, a nation that provided nearly all the help for the Berlin Airlift, a nation that financed the Marshall Plan, and a nation that, with its allies, defeated the tyrants who had plunged the Germans to the depths of hell and insanity. So a little over two years ago Schroeder campaigns on a policy of basically taking no sides in a struggle to liberate a country from a man as mad as Hitler; Schroeder pledged Germany to be neutral. That is his legacy; he provided moral comfort to the anti-American people in Europe and the US who were morally confused about the war in Iraq. He provided false comfort to Saddam and may have given him the hope that the US wouldn't attack. Now, he encourages dallying while Iran builds nuclear weapons. One might have hoped that Schroeder would have seen his way to lead the German people rather than to demagogue to the crackpot Leftists who never forgave the US for all it's done for Germany. Is it any wonder that Schroeder is sooo comfortable with Chirac? They're from different parties and political philosophies but they are cut from the same cloth.
I was still at university undergrad when Schroeder was elected in 1998. Although politics was not my area of study as an armchair historian I sensed there will be something big brewing in Germany when Schroeder won. People at that time painted him to be as in the same mold as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton i.e. former radical leftist who had accepted free market reforms, and who had grown realistic in use of arms and defending against threats. (Now we can pontifate whether Bill Clinton was one but presses in non-US West were not glowing on Clinton when it comes to his foreign policies - he was still too conservative for non-US Western Left).
Back to Schroeder. But people also forgot that the Social Democratic Party of Germany had a generation of anti-American radicals in their '68 generation that Blair never quite belonged there and their hold on the SPD is much stronger than Leftists' hold in the US Dems or even British labour Party. And Schroeder was born in 1944 - precisely the first generation of German that had no personal memory of WWII and only had impressions of post-war Allied (US and British) overseeing (or lording or supervising, if you will) of his country in his memory. Anyone who were in such upbringing naturally tend to be quite anti-whoever occupied/lorded his country.
Looking at his behaviours in Kosovo I was already muttering at myself that "Oh no, when the chips are truly down Blair would perhaps support the US, but Schroeder would cut and run and sit on the fence.". Subsequent post-9/11 period lent me brief hopes that this would have awakened Germans since they had far more common to Anglos than Latins (French, etc) but I was proved wrong. Amazing considering America has more German ancestry than British ancestry and German influence is as much as Anglo-Celtic legacy. But modern day Germans spurn on Americans.