16 years Chancellor: Merkel, a power man

16 years Chancellor and most powerful woman in Europe – that is not possible without a strong instinct for power. Merkel’s power was never dominant. But you should never underestimate them.

Angela Merkel is like a sphinx. She keeps personal things well hidden. Who is this woman? Even after almost 16 years as chancellor, there is no easy answer to this. It is easier to say who Angela Merkel is not: namely neither a cold-hearted physicist nor a “do-gooder” from a Templin parsonage. And also not the male assassin ice queen, whose rise is said to be paved by inferior male competitors. They have already caused their own defeats.

Merkel is not suitable for a “House of Cards” comparison. The desire for revenge seems alien to her. Apparently, money and glamor don’t attract them either. Even her political enemies would not claim she was corruptible. Anyone who fills the shopping cart with wine and toilet paper in the supermarket in Berlin-Mitte is down-to-earth. Merkel is the absolute alternative to populists of all kinds.

One should never underestimate Merkel. This was not only felt by the gentlemen from the so-called Andean Pact, but also by their difficult international opponents: Silvio Berlusconi, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Viktor Orban and Donald Trump – they all came and went, Merkel stayed.

A feeling for political moods

One cannot become the most powerful woman in Europe without a strong instinct for power. But Merkel’s power does not come across as legs apart, not gocking and dominant. Pithy announcements, alpha animal behavior or flaming speeches are also not part of their weapons. Reliable, precise, incredibly hard-working and well-read, Merkel usually knows how to think things from the end. Her detailed knowledge down to the last decimal point drove many who had to negotiate with her to white heat.

Merkel’s recipe for success undoubtedly includes her feeling for social moods, paired with political suppleness. It can turn abruptly when the wind changes direction, such as when the nuclear phase-out or when the conscription is suspended. Merkel also deliberately paved the way for “marriage for all” in mid-2017 at the “Brigitte” event. It cleared one of the last conservative bastions. She abstained from the vote in the Bundestag, but demonstratively wore a blazer in the same color as the voting slip: blue for a yes. A teaching example for the Merkel method: switch quickly and always ask yourself what is politically enforceable and with whom.

Visionary? Hardly likely

The Chancellor will hardly be remembered as a believer or a visionary. But as a guarantee of stability in times of crisis and social upheaval. Loosely based on Winston Churchill’s saying “never let a good crises go to waste”, Merkel’s authority seemed to grow with every new international challenge, especially abroad.

Towards the end of her term in office she was even chosen by the liberal part of America to be the last advocate of the free world, Donald Trump’s most powerful opponent. Merkel herself only shook her head about it in background discussions. Those who attended the countless summit meetings saw her rather as a mediator – often also the final instance. The woman who ends up bringing things together in a long night’s meeting, for whom compromise is not a sign of weakness, but the only way to move forward together. Even if with triple steps.

Stability and standstill

Merkel is not a revolutionary who initiates something new. She suspects visionary ideas and big words. It ensures stability, but also manages standstill at the same time. She is therefore partly responsible for a dangerous kind of lack of debate in this country. Where the social center becomes too brazen and consensual, the noisy fringes gain strength. Where there is apparently no alternative to anything, the wrong alternatives emerge.

Merkel’s programmatic attempt in 2005 to bring about a neoliberal turnaround almost drove her out of the chancellorship. After that, she no longer took political risk. In 2015, however, it took an unexpectedly clear position when it decided not to close the German borders during the refugee crisis. Even if, after her much-quoted sentence “We can do it”, she never explained what exactly and how Germany should “do it”. Merkel was unable to implement a more humane European refugee policy during her term of office. But here, too, her sentence will remain: “If we now start to have to apologize for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country.”

Jump from the three-meter board

A story has come down to us from Merkel’s youth. As a schoolgirl, she is said to have stood hesitantly on a three-meter board for a long time and only jumped when the break bell rang. Just in time for the jump to count. Even in major political crises, Merkel literally jumped just in time. Perhaps in the hope that just by waiting the problems would develop in the right direction by themselves.

In two major crises, however, their tactics did not work. In the Corona crisis, the backlog of reforms and Germany’s inability to face the crisis are relentlessly exposed. And in view of the climate catastrophe, Merkel’s strategy of waiting, hesitation and hesitation failed across the board. The lost years can no longer be made up and burden your successor with painful decisions in order to prevent the worst.

Shadows on the Political Legacy

“Politics is what is possible,” said Merkel to justify young climate activists. But precisely in light of the climate crisis, the greatest human task that the world is now facing, the supposed climate chancellor has not even tried to explore the limits of what is possible. Merkel knows that this casts dark shadows on her political legacy.

And Merkel is also partly responsible for the disaster in the Afghanistan withdrawal. The question of why warnings were reacted to so late and why German citizens and local staff were flown out so late and the problem was made a top priority is likely to leave its mark on foreign policy.

If Merkel now leaves the political arena, she will create something that all her predecessors have failed because of: the self-determined jump from power. “I would like to find the right time to get out of politics at some point. Then I don’t want to be a half-dead wreck,” she told photographer Herlinde Koelbl in 1998. The Chancellor has largely achieved this self-imposed goal.

But it is also true that in autumn 2018, after poor state election results, she sacrificed her office as party leader under great pressure in order to save herself as Chancellor for the entire legislative period. Even her then designated successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, was taken by surprise and presented with a fait accompli. Things went wrong for Kramp-Karrenbauer. Not for Merkel.

But after 16 years Merkel is up to her party. And so the otherwise presidential chancellor decided in her probably last speech in the Bundestag to intervene in the election campaign and advertise Armin Laschet. Contrary to her long-standing maxim, whoever follows her must be able to walk alone. Merkel must have weighed up coldly what harms her more in view of the poor poll numbers: the excursion into the lows of party politics or having to read in the history books after the election that she had brought about a red-green government at the end of her long term in office.

End without pathos

Your term of office ends as it began: sober, without much pathos and probably filled with a lot of work until the last day. It is hard to imagine that, like her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, she could be put on the payroll by a rich despot. Or that, as Helmut Kohl once did, she fights from retirement against everyone and everything that could endanger the self-image for posterity. Merkel’s response to her plans for the time after her chancellorship is typically sober and unpretentious: “Then I’ll sleep a little and then we’ll see.”

Although your last day at the Chancellery could drag on. After the last federal election, it took more than four months for the new federal government to exist. So it is not impossible that the New Year’s message will come from Angela Merkel again.