Chancellor candidate Scholz: The mistakes of others

While Baerbock and Laschet afford weaknesses in the election campaign, candidate for Chancellor Scholz remains unscathed. Suddenly the Greens are back within reach for the SPD – and thus at least a theoretical power option.

In the fight for public attention, Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz was last seen as beaten. The three-way battle for the Chancellery was more of a duel. Almost everything focused on his two opponents: the green competitor Annalena Baerbock and Union candidate Armin Laschet. Not all of them were positive reports, on the contrary – but Scholz hardly appeared in the media.

But at least since his last major appearance on the international stage before the federal election, Scholz has been back. At the G20 meeting in Venice last week, he was able to pat himself a little on the back that he had played a decisive role in driving the planned global tax reform.

In the race for the Chancellery, Scholz wants to score points with his government experience and thus catch up with the still large deficit. What has long been considered a hopeless undertaking has recently become more realistic again in view of the weaknesses of the others – and a little hope is germinating in the SPD.

Scholz as a crisis manager

The flood disaster offered Scholz the opportunity to act as a level-headed crisis manager. He deliberately did not present himself as a candidate for chancellor when he visited Ahrweiler last Thursday with the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer. He came to the crisis region as Vice Chancellor and Minister of Finance, on behalf of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was in the USA at the time.

Scholz expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims and promised the local people quick and unbureaucratic help. As first emergency aid, 400 million euros are to flow. Today the finance minister presented the plans for emergency aid to the cabinet. If possible, the first aid should go to those affected in July.

“Scholz can now benefit from his calm and objectivity,” says the political scientist and editor of the “Blätter für German and international politics”, Albrecht von Lucke. “That is obviously a quality feature in the crisis.”

But Scholz benefits most from the poor performance of his competition. Laschet’s actions were already often unhappy during the Corona crisis, von Lucke calls the images of Laschet laughing in the background in the flood area “disastrous”. His authority had already been scratched beforehand. “All of this is now brought out in a fatal way by Laschet’s fit of laughter, which speaks for the Rhenish cheerful nature, but not for the necessary seriousness and suitability for chancellor,” said von Lucke.

The laughing third?

According to Luckes, the Green candidate Baerbock actually behaved skillfully during the flood disaster: “She resisted the temptation to make profit from the crisis and to aggressively establish a causal connection between the flood and climate change.” It just doesn’t do her any good.

Without executive power, without a corresponding office, she would not have had the opportunity to appear as especially Laschet as the father of the country could actually do. In this way, however, the tweaking of her résumé and the fuss about the copied book passages would not be forgotten, but would continue to burden the election campaign of the Greens.

Improved poll results

Scholz’s own survey results have not been the biggest problem for him so far, but they have further improved compared to Laschet and Baerbock. But even if Scholz emerges stronger from the crisis, the SPD’s bad values ​​will remain. Even so, there is a power option. It is now about the race for second place, so von Lucke. The CDU will very likely be clearly ahead in the end. But according to current developments, it cannot be ruled out that the SPD will still overtake the Greens.

Should Scholz actually succeed in climbing over 20 percent with the SPD and overtaking the Greens, then – in addition to black-green – a traffic light coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP would also come into question. The FDP has so far rejected this alliance. However, primarily for reasons of election tactics, according to von Lucke. After the election, the temptation of power could still induce Christian Lindner and his party to participate in the traffic light.

So a lot can still happen before election day and the subsequent coalition negotiations. And for Scholz there remains the vague hope of finally moving into the Chancellery with calm and serenity.