The mood won't be any better tonight at any other post-election party: Guido Westerwelle stands before cheering party faithful as a winner. His Free Democrats (FDP) were the only incumbent party to win clear gains in parliament Sunday -- they even have a two-digit percentile for the first time in 15 years. Self-confident, with a broad smile, the leading Liberal mounted the stage and thanked his supporters for making the FDP the "third-strongest" power in the German Bundestag.

Still, the Liberals may not play a role in the next government. A black-yellow coalition of the Christian Democrats and FDP isn't likely to be strong enough, and a "stoplight" coalition (red-yellow-green, for the Social Democrats, FDP and Greens, respectively) has been categorically ruled out by Westerwelle himself. "We want to be clear about our plans," he said. "If we can't form a black-yellow coalition, then we'll be an opposition party."

Westerwelle has solidified his position as party chief, and Sunday's win is just the crowning triumph in a series of unusual achievements. Yet a week before the election, in front of an FDP convention in Berlin, he risked everything on a single outcome -- he said his party would be open to a coalition only with CDU/CSU. Every other combination -- especially the so-called "stoplight" coalition with the Greens and SPD -- was out of the question, he said. The delegates cheered him on, and after the vote on Sunday he repeated his strategy. He had run a successful campaign.

Which is lucky: Westerwelle's opponents within the FDP had started to sharpen their knives in case the strategy didn't pan out. Indeed, straitlaced FDP parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Gerhardt had already tried to oppose his party chief at the start of this year, with dark references to Westerwelle's disastrous 2002 "fun campaign." But Westerwelle wouldn't take the bait. He concentrated on profiling himself as an eager candidate for the foreign minister's office.

But Westerwelle is nothing if not a crafty tactician: One week before the election, he officially named Gerhardt as Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's shadow successor. He appeared with Gerhardt in public almost ostentatiously; the two men swanned into the FDP convention hall side-by-side