The man on the bench

IF YOU are one of your country's most popular players, you hate watching the game from the bench. Such is the position of Gerhard Schröder as Germany warms up for perhaps momentous political change. The premier of Lower Saxony, the most dashing figure in the Social Democratic opposition, finds himself sidelined from his party's talks with Helmut Kohl's government on how to overcome Germany's economic ills. Exclusion from this is frustrating enough, but he also perceives that Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democrats' national leader, increasingly fancies himself as the man to challenge Chancellor Kohl for the job that he covets himself.