I believe in Merkels

Angela Merkel- who, as Bunnie Diehl points out, is a fellow Lutheran pastor's daughter- and her Christian Democratic Party cling to a narrow lead over frequent U.S. critic Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder's Social Democratic Party in tomorrow's German election.

Schroeder, along with France's Jacques Chirac, was one of our least helpful "allies" when it came to the current Gulf War- although he has quietly been training officers for the new Iraqi army at German military facilities.

Merkel, if victorious, would be Germany's first female Chancellor- and would pursue a policy of closer and warmer relations with the United States.