After Angela
The Beginning of the Post-Merkel Era
Angela Merkel's recent announcement that she would step down
as the chair of the Christian Democratic Union has opened up a race for power
that could define the future of the conservative party and the country. New
elections could be next.
By Melanie Amann, Markus Feldenkirchen and Ralf Neukirch
November 08, 2018
12:30 PM
When Friedrich Merz went to bed on the night of Oct. 28, he
was certain that his old rival, Chancellor Angela Merkel, would announce the
next morning that she was stepping down from the leadership of the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU). He had just finished watching the results from the
state election in Hesse and seen the CDU plunge 11 percentage points relative
to its result in 2014.
Merz has been a political insider long enough to know that
Merkel couldn't simply ignore the result, particularly after the center-right
had done so poorly in Bavaria just two weeks previous. And for days prior to
the Hesse election, his old CDU allies had been calling to encourage him.
Finally, after 18 years of waiting, the moment seemed to have arrived for which
they had been waiting: the end of Merkel's tenure as chairwoman of the CDU.
And that is exactly what happened.
Merkel's announcement that she would withdraw her candidacy
for CDU leadership ahead of the party's December party convention released a
dynamic that immediately changed the entire architecture of the country's
political framework. The leadership battle in the CDU had long been simmering.
Now, it has burst out into the open. For almost two decades, internal party
democracy had been frozen, Merkel's grip on leadership tight and unyielding.
Now, though, there are several candidates who have thrown their hats into the
ring to determine the future course of the CDU -- and nobody in the party's
leadership can control what will happen next.
More than that, few in the party believe that Merkel will
remain chancellor for long following the CDU convention in December -- no
matter who emerges victorious in the race to succeed her.
The Closing Act
But the race isn't completely about who will end up leading
Germany's strongest party in the post-Merkel era. It is also about revenge,
about delayed gratification and about whether the clock can be turned back.
Merkel is not only giving up a party office -- her political legacy is at
stake.
What has now begun is the closing act of an extraordinary
story, the German version of David versus Goliath. Once upon a time, a trio of
men thought that it was up to them to lead the CDU out of the era of Helmut
Kohl. It seemed guaranteed that Friedrich Merz, Roland Koch or Christian Wulff
would take over leadership of the party and, later, of Germany. The future was
clear before it had even arrived. But then came the fall of the Berlin Wall,
and Angela Merkel, who cleverly took advantage of a major party donation
scandal to take control of the CDU. For the trio of men from the West and their
supporters -- the so-called "Andes Pact" -- Merkel was little more
than an accident of history. They couldn't believe that a woman who learned her
politics in the East would suddenly be steering the CDU ship. And that this
woman would modernize the party to such a degree that it no longer had much to
do with the CDU as they had come to know it. "Unfortunately, Merkel has no
feel for the party," complained one senior CDU member at the time.
"We, on the contrary, grew up within the party. We know what the CDU is and
what it is not."
In other words, it isn't just old personal wounds that are
now fueling Merz and his supporters, even if such wounds are plentiful. They
also have a problem with the new direction the party took under Merkel -- the
slide to the left and the abandonment of traditional positions like support for
nuclear energy and mandatory conscription. "If the CDU gives up pretty
much everything that it considered right and proper for decades, then we
shouldn't be surprised if our core voters turn away," Merz wrote fully 10 years
ago.
Now, he wants to become CDU leader to correct all of the
mistakes that he believes Merkel made as party chairwoman. And in doing so, the
62-year-old Merz is fulfilling the longing many party members have for the
good, old CDU: conservative, pro-business and preferably masculine. Health
Minister Jens Spahn, although he is 24 years younger than Merz, has a similar
image of his party. And then there is CDU General Secretary Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is seen as Merkel's favorite, in part because she has
tended to support the course Merkel has charted.
DER SPIEGEL
Merkel, though, now realizes that she no longer has any
influence over the direction her party will take or over how much of her legacy
will remain. She also senses that her tenure as chancellor could come to a much
quicker end than she would like. Back in 2004, when then-Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder gave up leadership of the Social Democrats to Franz Müntefering under
a similar situation to the one Merkel now faces, she blasted the move as
"a complete loss of authority" and "the beginning of the
end." She knows that the same could now apply to her -- which is why she
had been hoping to the very end that the Hesse result would turn out better
than it did.
Indeed, there are now significant doubts about the story
that her decision to step down from party leadership had long been planned and
was completely voluntary. There was, in fact, a group of conservatives
surrounding Wolfgang Schäuble, the president of the German parliament, the Bundestag,
who intended to pressure her to step down if she didn't draw the consequences
herself. Schäuble had even told his friend Friedrich Merz to decide by the
Sunday afternoon of the Hesse election whether he wanted to campaign for party
leadership or not.
Growing Pressure on Merkel
But the Merkel opponents within the party had begun
preparing for the end of Merkel's leadership long before that. Back in March,
at the funeral services for Cardinal Karl Lehman, many of the members of the
old Andes Pact expressed to each other their frustration with Merkel and the
fact that, despite the extreme difficulties she had had putting together her
current lackluster government following the general election one year ago, she
had given no indication that she was preparing to make way for a new
generation. They thought that it might make sense to challenge her leadership
at the upcoming party convention. And they quickly agreed that Merz would make
a perfect challenger -- and they began pressuring him to take on the role. One
of the most important things that Merz had going for him: the support of CDU
eminence grise Wolfgang Schäuble.
He didn't just give Merz advice, he also sought to open
doors for him. In mid-October, Merz traveled to Brussels for talks with
important politicians and officials, and Schäuble managed to arrange a meeting
for him with Joseph Daul, the French head of the European People's Party, the
center-right group in European Parliament to which the CDU also belongs. But
not long later, Daul warned Merkel that Schäuble was working on behalf of Merz
behind the scenes.
The chancellor was unimpressed. "Schäuble has a new
candidate every week," she said. But it was the moment at which Merkel
must have realized that her opponents were serious this time.
Merz was a frequent visitor to Brussels during this
important phase. On Oct. 10, for example, he went to the fall reception of the
Deutsches Aktieninstitut, a financial lobbying organization. The next morning,
he met with Günther Oettinger, Germany's European commissioner and also a
member of the Andes Pact. Oettinger also encouraged Merz to think about running
for the CDU leadership should Merkel pull back. Oettinger felt that Merz would
make a good successor because Merz had also once been a European parliamentarian
and held similar views on European policy as he did. Merz told Oettinger that
he wanted to wait and see how the conservatives performed in the state
elections in Bavaria and Hesse.
Oettinger was far from the only one who encouraged Merz to
take the step. Another member of the Andes Pact, the former governor of Hesse
Roland Koch, also pushed him to think hard about running to become the CDU's
leader. They had the impression that Merz wanted to take the step but was wary
of the risk involved. "His preference would be for the party leadership
committee to unanimously request him to run for the position," one ally
joked.
Still, Merz's allies were unsure if the timing was right.
They were looking ahead to the Hesse election and felt that if the CDU's result
fell to 28 percent, they would be able to move forward to pressure Merkel to
resign. Just to make sure, Schäuble placed an op-ed in the influential
conservative weekly Welt am Sonntag on the day of the state vote. Typically for
Schäuble, the text wasn't about Merkel at all, but about Max von Baden, the
German chancellor who dethroned Kaiser Wilhelm II on Nov. 9, 1918.
That moment, Schäuble wrote, was "the perfect lesson
for choosing the right moment in politics." Von Baden's hesitation had
"increased the pressure that led to the revolutionary events of Nov.
9," Schäuble wrote, adding that von Baden's tenure as chancellor was a
lesson that the right moment in politics "is usually only apparent in
hindsight. And that doing nothing can also have consequences."
Hidden Messages
Merkel's allies have become experts over the years in
decoding the hidden messages delivered by long-time adversary Schäuble, knew
immediately how this particular history lesson was intended: as a demand that
Merkel hand over leadership of the CDU.
When the results from Hesse began rolling in that Sunday
evening, it quickly became clear that the CDU was in trouble, even if the party
would likely still remain in power in the state as the head of a coalition
government. That evening, Schäuble's son-in-law Thomas Stobl, himself a deputy
leader of the CDU, flew on behalf of the anti-Merkel group to feel out whether
the time was right to push her out.
But Strobl's mission was in vain: Merkel gave no indication
that she was preparing to resign from the post. Shortly after the first results
from Hesse were announced, Kramp-Karrenbauer met with Merkel to ask the
chancellor how she should respond to questions about Merkel's future.
"What should I tell the journalists?" she asked.
"Has your position changed?" Merkel told her that her conviction that
the positions of party chair and chancellor must be held by the same person --
as she had recently told the daily Augsburger Allgemeine -- had not budged.
A short time later, Kramp-Karrenbauer went before the
cameras in the foyer of CDU party headquarters in Berlin and said: "The
CDU party chairwoman has been very clear that she intends to run again at the
party convention."
The Decision
Not even 24 hours later, though, Merkel stood at the same
spot and delivered the exact opposite message, saying she would not run again
to become party chair. During the press conference, Merkel didn't make a big
deal of the fact that she had just completely contradicted herself. Yes, she
said, the decision "is a significant deviation from my deeply felt
conviction." But, she added, she still felt the "risk" was
justifiable. She seemed completely in control and not at all agitated, as
though she had accepted her fate.
"Since when have I been thinking of this step?"
she asked rhetorically. "Since before the summer break."
And indeed, she had been thinking about it for some time.
There are very few people who Merkel consults about questions of such
existential importance. But one of them is Annette Schavan, the former
education minister. On the last weekend in July, right in the middle of the
parliamentary break, Schavan traveled to Hohenwalde, a town just short of the
border with Poland, to visit with Merkel at her dacha. This is where Merkel
spent much of her summer vacation this year, forgoing her usual trip to South
Tyrol.
During Schavan's visit, the two them discussed potential future
scenarios, and both were convinced that conservatives were facing steep losses
in the upcoming state elections in Bavaria and Hesse and that pressure on
Merkel would continue to rise. The two women considered how Merkel could
justify giving up the party chair position if need be while at the same time
hanging on to the Chancellery. Merkel, though, secretly hoped that it wouldn't
come to that, as can be seen from her subsequent comments to the Augsburger
Allgemeine.
But ultimately, she saw an increasing number of indications
that her rival Friedrich Merz wasn't just thinking of a candidacy but was
taking concrete steps. The plan she had hammered out with Schavan was becoming
more probable all the time.
DER SPIEGEL
Merkel likely made her decision on the evening of the
election in Hesse. Critique of her leadership from state chapters of the CDU
had begun trickling into the Chancellery and the rumor that Merz was intending
to challenge her for party leadership was solidifying. It became clear to
Merkel that a debate about her position as party chair would erupt in the
coming days and she couldn't wait for the party leadership retreat scheduled
for a week hence. She had to take action if she wanted some modicum of control
of the unfolding situation.
On Monday morning, just minutes before party leaders were
set to gather to discuss the Hesse result, Merkel walked into
Kramp-Karrenbauer's office and told the general secretary that she was not
going to run for re-election as CDU chairwoman. For a moment, Kramp-Karrenbauer
was speechless.
A Period of Anarchy
In the meeting a short time later, Merkel had hardly
informed party officials of her decision before a representative of Friedrich
Merz informed the mass-circulation tabloid Bild that he intended to run.
That put the pressure on Kramp-Karrenbauer. She had actually
hoped to wait a bit, feeling as she did that a sudden announcement was somehow
disrespectful to Merkel. But she was concerned that the Merz train could
quickly gather momentum. So she held a long speech about the tepid results from
Hesse and spoke of the problems that the CDU had to address in the future. And
finished her remarks by saying: "That is why I am running for the position
of chairwoman." Applause erupted in the room.
Just minutes later, Jens Spahn threw his hat into the ring
as well. It was a spontaneous move with no real plan behind it. The room went
silent.
"It wasn't coordinated," says a member of the
CDU's conservative wing. "There was a loss of control for a couple of
hours on Monday." Spahn, the conservative wing representative says,
"lost his nerve," adding that "following every dictatorship, a
period of anarchy follows. That's what happened on Monday."
Merz and his close friend Schäuble have been waiting for a
long time for an opportunity to get even with Merkel and to reverse her
political course. Few other CDU politicians feel as humiliated by her as those
two, both of whom believe that Merkel prevented them from receiving their
political dues. Now, they are standing in the way of the chancellor's final
political goal: that of retaining control over her own departure.
The two men have been friends for a long time. When Schäuble
celebrated his 75th birthday one year ago, Merz wasn't just invited to the
official ceremony, but also to the private party for family and friends. Merkel
was not. Merz was also among the first to learn that Schäuble no longer wanted
to be in the cabinet following last year's general election.
Merz has a lot to thank Schäuble for. Back in 1996, Schäuble
installed Merz as the senior conservative on the Finance Committee in German
parliament. Four years later, he then ensured that Merz succeeded him as
conservative floor leader when he was forced to resign in early 2000 due to his
role in the CDU donation scandal.
Schäuble also promoted Merkel, surprising everyone in 1998
by making her the party's general secretary. Everyone assumed that she would
remain loyal to Schäuble out of gratitude, but Merkel seized the first chance
she got to set out on her own.
In mid-December 1999, just as the party donation scandal was
reaching its apex, Merkel published her famous open letter in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung challenging the party to emancipate itself from Helmut Kohl.
Schäuble only learned of the existence of the letter once it was published. It
was the first wound that Merkel inflicted on him.
He paid her back in his own way. When the question arose two
years later whether Merkel would be the chancellor candidate for the
conservatives or whether that honor would go to Edmund Stoiber of the Christian
Social Union, the CDU's Bavarian sister party, Schäuble supported Stoiber. As
did Merz and other senior members of the Andes Pact.
What Merz didn't know, however, is that Stoiber had promised
to support Merkel for the position of conservative floor leader after the
election. When Merz learned about the deal on the evening of Stoiber's defeat
to Gerhard Schröder, he was furious. It was only with significant effort that
Schäuble was able to convince him to remain in politics at all -- and Merz was
left to serve his hated rival as deputy floor leader.
'The Woman from East Germany'
Merz never really got over the defeat. In an interview
shortly after the 2002 general election, he complained that Merkel had not
adhered to an agreement regarding the position of floor leader. But, he added
grumpily, he wasn't surprised. After all, he "knows her in such
situations."
Increasingly, Merz was unable to hide his dislike for
Merkel. The fact that "the woman from East Germany," as he called
her, passed by all of her deserving party allies and then even managed to win
the Chancellery is something that he saw as a lasting ignominy. In 2009, Merz
decided to no longer campaign for re-election in the Bundestag and left
politics.
Schäuble's relationship with Merkel likewise worsened
quickly, reaching its nadir in the spring of 2004. That year saw the election
of a new German president and Merkel had initially supported Schäuble for the
position. But then she saw an opportunity to push through a candidate together
with the support of the business-friendly Free Democrats as a kind of precursor
to joining the party in a future governing coalition. In the decisive meeting
of CDU leaders in March 2004, Schäuble made one final effort to turn the tide
in his own favor. It isn't wise, he said, "to allow smaller partners to
dictate important decisions." Everyone knew how difficult it was for
Schäuble to toot his own horn, but he badly wanted the office of president.
Still, Merkel wouldn't budge and together with the FDP, she
installed the former International Monetary Fund head Horst Köhler in the
office.
From that point on, Schäuble was damned to serve in the
cabinet of a woman who had destroyed his life's dream. First, he served as
interior minister before moving to the Finance Ministry -- and he consistently
made it clear that he felt he had better leadership qualities than Merkel.
The depth of the wounds suffered by Merz and Schäuble would
occasionally surface in the ensuing years. "The strategy of putting as
many voters from the other side into a coma is likely at an end," Merz
said bitingly last year in reference to Merkel's soporific political style.
Schäuble, for his part, became more vocal in his criticism the weaker Merkel
became, particularly in reference to her refugee policies, the result of which
he described as an "avalanche."
Following the most recent general election in September
2017, Schäuble elected to leave the cabinet for the position of Bundestag
president. That meant that he no longer had to hew as closely to the
Chancellery line, a freedom of which he has taken full advantage. Ahead of the
state elections in Bavaria and Hesse, he publicly speculated about the end of
the Merkel era. "She is no longer as beyond dispute as she was in the past
three, or two-and-a-half, legislative periods," he said. He said he
expected the election results would have consequences for national policy and,
as such, for the chancellor's standing.
By that point, Schäuble knew that his friend Merz was ready
to run for the position of CDU party chairman. Indeed, he didn't just encourage
Merz to do so, but also helped him choose the appropriate timing of his
announcement. The more quickly he made his announcement following the Hesse
election, Schäuble told Merz, the worse it would be for Merkel.
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Part 2: A Rendevouz with the Past
November 08, 2018
12:30 PM
When Merz held a press conference last Wednesday to
reintroduce himself to the country, it was like a rendezvous with the past. His
hair is a bit thinner, his face a bit gaunter, but otherwise he looks just the
same as he always has.
Merz said that the CDU needs "clarity about its core
brand" and said that it cannot accept a situation in which divisive
parties on both the right-wing and left-wing fringes have become established.
As always, Merz was well-spoken and full of conviction.
Merz is the great hope for all those who would like to see
the Merkel era come to an end as soon as possible. Furthermore, many see him as
the one who can bring back those disgruntled CDU voters who have jumped ship in
recent years for the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany. And that hope
might even be justified. When Merz speaks of a "national identity"
and "traditional values," it doesn't sound forced. Furthermore, his
pro-European stance protects him against accusations of being a parochial
nationalist.
"The grassroots are drunk on Merz," says a local
CDU representative from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, adding that he is
seen as the messiah. "But that can change."
It is possible for someone who has been out of politics for
the last 10 years to step in and take over the leadership of a big-tent party
like the CDU? The view from afar can be helpful, says Merz. He's part of an
international legal practice and he has a seat on several supervisory boards,
including for the gigantic American asset management firm Blackrock. Recently,
he stopped for a chat with former Economics Minister Philipp Rösler at a summer
party held by the newspaper Bild. According to someone who listened in, the two
talked about which of them had the bigger airplane. For some time now, Merz has
been living in a parallel world that is far away from the needs of normal
people.
It is also unclear if he can win over those CDU members who
are in favor of the course of modernization pursued by Merkel. It isn't a small
group, as Merz well knows. During his press conference last week, he was
careful to speak of environmental protection and about the women and young
people who needed to have an opportunity in the CDU. Whether people view such
sentiments as credible coming from him will be decisive in the success or
failure of his efforts to be elected to the party chairmanship.
The only one who looks to be in a position to stop his
comeback is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, or AKK as she is frequently called. But
given that she has only been CDU general secretary since February, the
personnel shuffle may be coming too early for her. Her initial plan had called
for slowly increasing her profile within the party, developing her network and
taking steps to prepare for leadership by 2020. Now, though, she is in the
position of having to make a jump for it.
But Kramp-Karrenbauer is hardly an outsider. After 37 years
in the CDU, she regularly receives broad support in elections to various party
bodies. She has experience in a variety of ministries, from education to labor
to interior. And her supporters are fond of reminding people that it was her
victory in the Saarland state election in 2017 that put the initial brakes on
Martin Schulz's efforts to challenge Merkel for the Chancellery last year.
The CDU core likewise has great respect for her decision to
give up her safe position as governor of Saarland to serve the party as general
secretary. If Jens Spahn loses the election to succeed Merkel, he would return
to being health minister while Merz would continue in the private economy. For
Kramp-Karrenbauer, on the other hand, her entire political career is at stake.
Should she fail, she has said she would also give up the general secretary
position. This situation is likewise something that many CDU members will take
into account when casting their ballots.
Kramp-Karrenbauer's greatest weakness is likely her
proximity to Merkel. Merz's supporters refer to her as "Merkel II."
She has, though, sought to carefully distance herself from the chancellor in
recent months; in emails to the party base, she hasn't shied away from openly
addressing problems with Merkel's current government. Still, her dry public
appearances and her style of calmly considering her options remind many of
Merkel.
AKK's supporters hope that the discussion of future party
leadership will soon cease focusing exclusively on Merkel and instead seek to
answer the question: What does the CDU of the future want to be? A
conservative, Islamophobic, economically liberal power, as embodied by Spahn
and Merz? Or the humanitarian, centrist party that unites rather than
polarizes?
In the ensuing campaign, Kramp-Karrenbauer hopes to present
herself as an intermediary between the two party wings. Furthermore, she can
point to the fact that in the last several years, she has fought for the party
on the front lines and won important elections while others simply stood on the
sidelines and watched.
Those who see Kramp-Karrenbauer as the most malleable of the
trio running for the CDU chairmanship, however, are mistaken. Her supporters
know how to run a campaign and know that it is worth telling journalists that
Merz possesses an airplane in addition to a pilot's license. Should he become
CDU head, asked one member of the AKK camp innocently, would Merz fly to
campaign events in eastern Germany in his private jet? Would he climb directly
out of the cockpit onto the market squares of Zwickau and Gera to talk to
people whose jobs were cut by one of those financial institutes that works
closely with Blackrock? And did you know, her team is careful to ask, that Merz
was once in favor of weakening job security regulations and introducing the
42-hour work week?
No Clear Favorite
This is, in short, the first time that the CDU has seen a
race in which there is no clear favorite, one in which the old method of
backroom string-pulling isn't likely to work. Aside from the CDU women's group,
no association within the CDU is likely to endorse a candidate, and the largest
state chapter, the one from North Rhine-Westphalia, can't choose sides either
since both Merz and Spahn come from the state. Plus, they are both economically
liberal, both prefer a strong state, both are seen as Merkel detractors and
both are socially conservative. Even the openly gay Spahn recently opted to
marry his partner, a move viewed by many as a very traditional.
When the votes are cast on Dec. 7 in Hamburg, there will be
a run-off if none of the three candidates emerge with more than 50 percent of
the votes in the first ballot. It seems likely that such a run-off would pit
Merz against Kramp-Karrenbauer. For Spahn, Merz's candidacy is a significant
nuisance. He even admitted to confidantes that Merz's comeback came as a
surprise. Currently, he is seen as the candidate with the weakest chances. Even
Merz doesn't see him as much of a threat. The fact that Spahn, in an op-ed for
the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which he outlined his candidacy,
identified refugee policy as the most important issue was seen by many as a
desperate attempt to sharpen his profile.
Migration policy, Spahn wrote, is "the white elephant
in the room" and the party can no longer be silent about it. A few lines
later, though, he wrote that the debate should finally produce results. His
opponents have been savoring the contradiction. "Which is it?" they
wonder. Spahn, they say, is only interested in power and develops his positions
not out of conviction, but out of a desire to differentiate himself from his
opponents. They point to his recent video, a 69-second clip of him stepping
into elevators and crossing the street.
Are Snap Elections Ahead?
The result of the election won't just carry significant
consequences for Angela Merkel. The fate of the current governing coalition
could also hang in the balance and snap elections are one possible outcome.
If there is any chance left that Merkel remains in office
for the remainder of her term, then it could only happen under the party
leadership of Kramp-Karrenbauer. The two women trust and respect each other.
But even that constellation would be problematic. Kramp-Karrenbauer would have
to sharply distance the CDU from the government so that she wouldn't fall
victim to the widespread dissatisfaction with the current coalition.
If Merz or Spahn were to win, Merkel's tenure would likely
soon be over. It is hard to imagine a constellation of Spahn being both CDU
chair and a member of Merkel's cabinet. The two lack even the minimum amount of
mutual trust that would be necessary for such a situation to work.
The end would likely come even more quickly if Merz were to
emerge victorious. He loathes both Merkel and her confidantes with a fervor
that is rare even in politics. When asked last Wednesday about his departure
from politics a decade ago, Merz said that when two people "don't fit
together in their convictions or their styles, then they must separate." He
could just as well, however, have been talking about the near future. And
Merkel agrees. Should Merz win in early December, confidantes say, she wouldn't
stick around for long.
When then? Swapping out a chancellor is no small thing.
There is little chance that the Social Democrats, as junior coalition partner,
would support Merz. He himself assumes that the SPD would move further to the
left and begin looking for an excuse to end the coalition with the
conservatives.
An encounter with Merz these days -- with his energy and
euphoria resulting from the successful kick-off to his campaign -- makes it
clear that he has lofty goals. He didn't reenter politics to play third fiddle
to the chancellor and parliamentary floor leader. He enthusiastically points to
surveys that show him far ahead of his competitors for the party leadership
position. In addition, his popularity ratings aren't just high among CDU
supporters, but also in the population at large.
Merz doesn't just want to become CDU party head. He wants
power.
A New Start for Germany
Time for Merkel to Say Goodbye
Angela Merkel recently announced she would step down as
chair of the Christian Democratic Union but would remain chancellor. The
decision doesn't go far enough. It is time to let Germany make a new start.
© A DER SPIEGEL Commentary by Dirk
Kurbjuweit
November 08, 2018
12:33 PM
Greatness often shows itself in moments of parting.
Democracy is particularly dependent on the peaceful transfer of power, and on
the opportunity for renewal that comes with it. It looks as though Angela
Merkel has finally heeded this maxim. After 18 years at the helm of the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she is now stepping down. It's a good move,
by why is she only going halfway? Why is she insisting on staying on as
chancellor for three more years? For Germany's most important political office,
it is particularly important that such departures are successful. In Merkel's
case, it has not been. She has failed to demonstrate true greatness.
When she decided to run for another term as chancellor in
2017, she seemed tired and listless, but her supporters hoped she could be a
counterweight to Donald Trump and the leader of liberal democracy around the
world. They hoped that, together with French President Emmanuel Macron, she
could lead Europe out of its stasis. She ultimately didn't manage to do either.
She no longer plays an important role in international politics and in Europe,
she's actually part of the biggest problem -- the divisions between North and
South, East and West.
Part of that is because she has lost so much authority here
in her own country. Her third grand coalition government -- pairing her
conservatives with the center-left Social Democrats -- was supposed to
guarantee stability and restore calm in an unsettled country. It was supposed
to deliver sound political leadership. But 2018 has turned out to be one of the
most embarrassing years politically in postwar Germany. The main source of that
embarrassment was Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and not Merkel herself. He
humiliated her with hubris and insolence. It made him look worse than it did
her, but she failed to rein him in and stabilize the government. The recent
state election results in Bavaria and Hesse, which saw Merkel's conservatives
experience huge losses, can likewise be traced back to the chancellor.
A Great Deed and a Failure
She has failed to build on the merits that she has
unquestionably compiled. The governments she has led have done a good job of
steering Germany through the global financial crisis, cleaning up the budget
and staying out of the way of a lasting economic upswing. And they have
prudently expanded the welfare state by, for example, introducing the minimum
wage.
Her greatest deed remains the humanitarian policy shown
toward refugees in late summer of 2015. And her greatest failure remains the
fact that she didn't prepare that policy, even though she knew far in advance
that many refugees would be coming. She then lost control for a time -- and, as
has often been the case with her, she failed to explain her policy. Her style
has been characterized by a desire to lull people into impassivity rather than
foster a debate. That is the greatest sin she has committed against the
political culture.
When this year closes, Merkel will be a weak chancellor,
both domestically and internationally. And why should things get any better
after that? Merkel herself has announced that she will not run for re-election
in 2021. She is not the leader of the future. Everyone has begun looking toward
the post-Merkel era, and periods of transition are almost never particularly
constructive because power struggles dominate everything.
Without the party chair, she will be even weaker as
chancellor. She will have to come to terms with the new party chair, which will
definitely be complicated and will sap considerable amounts of energy and
concentration. One of the candidates to replace her as CDU chair is Friedrich
Merz, a man she once stripped of his role as leader of the conservative group
in German parliament. He left politics two years later. Merz's decision to run
to replace Merkel is in no small part driven by a desire for revenge.
Furthermore, he is more conservative and economically liberal than the
chancellor. The two of them could never be a dream team.
The same holds true for Jens Spahn, another candidate for
the position. He has positioned himself as one of Merkel's most vocal critics
within the CDU and as an opponent of her refugee policies. Merkel would have an
easier time with the third candidate, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, because the
two hold similar political beliefs. But that is no longer the criteria.
The country is now the priority, not her. The truth is that
Merkel's not entirely voluntary resignation as party chair is an egocentric
act. By renouncing one power, Merkel wants to retain the other, greater one --
the chancellorship. But there's no longer any reason for her to stay. Despite
all she has done for Germany, the country no longer needs her. New elections
without Merkel would provide an opportunity for a real fresh start.
Veteran chancellors often assume that the others are not yet
ready to succeed them, that they aren't yet capable -- but that's just the
hubris that can come with high office. When Merkel first entered the
Chancellery, many thought she wasn't up to it either. But over the ensuing years,
she proved them wrong. She should remember that and make a dignified exit. And
to do that, she has to go all the way.
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