Germany: Another triumph for Angela Merkel

We have now officially entered “the era of Merkelism,” said Heribert Prantl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. German voters have given Chancellor Angela Merkel “not just a victory, but a triumph.” With her decisive win this week, Merkel became the only major European leader to be re-elected twice since the 2008 global financial crash. How did she do it? Merkelism is a new force, “a kind of power politics that doesn’t flaunt its power.” The scientist from communist East Germany stands for a progressive kind of conservatism that spends frugally yet doesn’t flinch from recognizing gay marriage. Germans loved her stance on the euro crisis, which she “presided over like a Swabian housewife who keeps tight control of the finances.” She doesn’t thrust herself forward with a flashy personality, yet has managed to persuade voters that “whatever went well, the chancellor accomplished, while whatever went badly was the fault of the coalition.”

Her vanilla demeanor is her great strength, said Thomas Schmid in Die Welt. This was the first time in postwar history that a chancellor went to the polls certain of re-election. Unlike other successful multiterm leaders, notably Helmut Kohl, Merkel hasn’t been steadily losing support each election—instead, her Christian Democratic Union actually improved its showing over the 2009 vote, and she nearly took an absolute majority in the Bundestag, a feat not seen since 1957. “She appeals to the Germans because she is so inconspicuous, so seemingly without narcissism, just going about her business without bothering the citizens.” It’s a victory of the status quo.

“That Germans shy away from controversy and prefer the center isn’t news,” said Die Tageszeitung in an editorial. But even for our consensus culture, the way voters of all stripes have “practically anointed her queen” is astounding. Her quiet campaign slogan was “We’re doing well,” and the unspoken corollary was “and I’ll make sure it stays that way.” There’s no great ambition to her politics, it’s just “nice and smooth and pretty.” And there was no way her opponents could attack her because she gently disarmed them of all their weapons—-promising to cut reliance on nuclear energy and vaguely pledging to raise the minimum wage. Germans didn’t vote for a platform or a plan; they voted for her personally, for the great mother.

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And that’s a problem, said Brigitte Fehrle in the Berliner Zeitung. The CDU’s victory “belongs to her alone, not to her party.” Most of the other parties did worse than in the last election. Her former coalition partner, the libertarian-leaning Free Democrats, was the third-largest party in parliament last time around but this time failed to pass the 5 percent vote threshold, leaving it with no parliamentary seats for the first time since its founding after World War II. The main opposition Social Democrats, who will probably join Merkel in coalition, have practically no platform. In fact no party has a clear program or agenda. We’re all just depending on Merkel to make the decisions. “Since she isn’t immortal, though, she will have to make herself replaceable.” Only once she’s anointed a successor can we truly say “she is one of the greats.”