Jens Spahn: On, on and on

Jens Spahn actually didn’t want to become Minister of Health at all. But he took off – with a lot of zeal and moderate success. And then there was Corona – and things go up and down for the crisis minister.

There are sentences that you don’t hear very often in politics: “I simply don’t trust myself to do this” – that is a sentence like that. Jens Spahn, of all people, said it, and is said to have a lot but certainly not pronounced self-doubt. It wasn’t about political office either, but about care for the elderly, caring for relatives at home around the clock. The CDU politician was a guest at “Hart aber fair”, it was June 2018, at that time care was the body and stomach issue of the minister. Until Corona came.

The Ministry of Health is not a simple ministry, not an oasis of wellbeing. It’s about too much money that too many protagonists are arguing about. And it is about fears, emotions and excitement issues, such as making appointments with doctors.

Spahn’s footsteps

Spahn knows that too, after all, he was the Union parliamentary group’s health policy spokesman for many years. He didn’t really want to head the Ministry of Health, he had other plans. But when Chancellor Angela Merkel offered him the post, he didn’t say no. At the handover from Hermann Gröhe to Spahn on March 15, 2018, the young and dynamic new minister immediately declared that he wanted to tackle exciting issues. That was strategically smart because it leaves its mark. And Spahn wants to continue to leave its mark.

In Berlin he has long been believed to be the strong man of the Union to come. A biography appears – Spahn is just 38 years old and has not been in office for six months. He has the book presented by the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party in the Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch. “I know that one or the other thinks a biography at 38 – what is that?” Says Spahn and at the same time assures a little jokingly: What is in the book is also true. Usually. So also this sentence, which, according to his biography, he is said to have said to a friend in the spring: “I am known now. I still have to become popular.”

And doesn’t you get popular if you improve people’s lives?

Change to the defense department?

In July 2019, Spahn’s steadfastness as health minister will be put to a tough test. His cabinet colleague Ursula von der Leyen has been nominated as EU Commission President, so Spahn’s dream of becoming Federal Defense Minister is within reach. But nothing will come of it. Merkel appoints Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. So Spahn continues to whirl around in his ministry.

He puts forward an insane pace of reform, a turbo minister – one legislative proposal chases the next. In the budget debate for the 2020 budget, he corrects a colleague who, in his opinion, did not count correctly: “By the way, there are 20 laws in 20 months.”

Emergency care, on-site pharmacies, digitalization in the health care system and, above all, the fight against the nursing emergency: Spahn travels to Mexico and the Balkans to recruit nursing staff, with moderate success, but that doesn’t detract from his zeal. Motto: A lot helps a lot. And it’s not like he has nothing else to do.

In the CDU, the fight for party leadership is raging again, which this time is also a preliminary decision about the candidate for chancellor. Spahn, the secret hope of the younger generation in the Union, the conservatives, for whom Norbert Röttgen is too cool, Armin Laschet too lukewarm and Friedrich Merz too harsh, would have a chance. But he doesn’t jump. He leaves the chairmanship to Laschet. “There can only be one party leader, which also means that someone has to back off,” he explains, knowing full well that his time is yet to come. But then there is Corona first.

“We have to be vigilant, we have to be prepared,” he says after the first cases in Bavaria in early 2020. But: Nobody is prepared for the virus, for its effects. The pandemic of historic proportions hit Germany freezing. And also the minister, who at first takes refuge in cautious empty phrase rhetoric and speaks incessantly of the “dynamic of the situation”.

Even in spring 2020, no one knows exactly about this new type of corona virus. Neither science nor politics. Spahn takes an offensive approach to ignorance. That brings him the best poll results that a federal health minister has ever had. It’s popular now, but the pandemic is far from over. And Spahn probably suspects that it could be tight. He utters a sentence that accompanies him constantly afterwards, it could be the sentence of the pandemic, symptomatic of the behavior of politics in the crisis.

I think we will all have to forgive a lot in the political debate and also in the media debate after this corona situation.

He makes a kind of preventive apology for mistakes that are still to come. That was a clever move. Because of course mistakes happen.

The ministry is initially completely overwhelmed with the procurement of masks, test center infrastructure, vaccine procurement – and distribution to the federal states. Then there is the federal competence chaos. The dissatisfaction between lockdown, lockdown light and relaxation is growing among people. Spahn’s polls rush into the cellar. He remains stoic on the outside: “This pandemic is also a test of character for us as a society.”

It is also a test for the grand coalition. Because the SPD is targeting Spahn, it is of little use if the Chancellor expresses her confidence in him and declares that he is doing a great job.

Spahn is not one of those people who give in. His stable self-confidence helps him with this. The Minister of Health steers relatively undeterred through the pandemic – he lets criticism roll off.

Spahn gives the constant reminder – at least once a week, almost always seconded by RKI boss Lothar Wieler. When the third wave subsided, he said: “Now confidence must not turn into cockiness.” Exuberance, as Spahn was allowed to learn in this legislature, is rarely good.

Spahn is unlikely to remain Minister of Health. Not because he didn’t trust himself to go through the post-pandemic phase. But he simply feels called to something higher.