Has been to ？

THE small branch office of Dilek Kolat, a Social Democratic (SPD) politician in Berlin’s Friedenau district, is packed with locals who have turned up for a discussion on the topic “What is social justice?” After two hours the answer is, unsurprisingly, unclear. But the crowd’s enthusiasm is undimmed. Many sense that Martin Schulz, the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, may actually defeat Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic (CDU) incumbent, in the election on September 24th—and believe that if he does, social justice might be more than a matter for philosophical debates.

Mr Schulz’s selection as candidate in late January caused an extraordinary surge in the polls (see chart). The SPD, currently the junior partner in the coalition with Mrs Merkel’s conservative bloc, now runs neck-and-neck with it, each drawing just above 30%. If Germans could elect their chancellor directly, he would defeat Mrs Merkel 49% to 38%, according to Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, a pollster.

It is too early to tell whether this popularity is a “soap bubble” destined to pop, says Manfred Güllner of Forsa, another polling firm. As the former president of the European Parliament, Mr Schulz is well-known in Brussels, but he is still fresh in Berlin, untainted by domestic politics.

Yet his effect has been to awaken the base of a party that, like its centre-left cousins elsewhere in Europe, seemed to have lost its way. The SPD last won an election in 1998, when Gerhard Schröder became chancellor. Mr Schröder implemented a batch of market-friendly labour and welfare reforms. Today it is conservatives who laud this so-called “Agenda 2010” for making Germany competitive and slashing unemployment. The Social Democrats have turned against their own reforms, denouncing a neoliberal turn towards lower wages and away from social justice. Between 1998 and 2013 the number of people voting for the SPD almost halved, to 11m.

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Hello. Here is my question.

The phrase "has been to" is in present perfect tense, but this phrase is more commomly used equal to "has gone to" in sentence like “I have been to visit my mother twice this month”. So, to express an "effect " which has already happened, why bother the writer using the phrase “has been to awaken ” rather than using the more common expression "has awakened" to indicate a present perfect?

THANKS!