Laschet in Hagen: balancing act in the disaster

A visit to the disaster area is a fine line for election campaigners. History shows that these moments can definitely decide elections.

The Chancellor of the past almost 40 years all had their flood moments: practical test. Sympathy. Crisis management. In 2013 Angela Merkel experienced the flood of the century in Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria. The caretaker can be shown how to fill sandbags. She promises a billion dollar relief fund. Her predecessor Gerhard Schröder presented himself as a man of action in rubber boots and a rain jacket during the Elbe flood in 2002. Helmut Kohl, on the other hand, was still balancing unsuitably for a disaster in a suit over sandbag barriers when the floods of the Oder hit the German-Polish border region in 1997.

So now NRW Prime Minister and Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet has come to Altena and Hagen in North Rhine-Westphalia. And again the question arises: How can a balance be found between the requirement to be on site in such a catastrophe and the temptation to stand in the way senselessly in order to get effective and electoral photos? This is too serious a situation, Laschet says, and thus nothing to create images with. It is important to be there.

Schröder’s rubber boot moment

The political scientists Michael Bechtel and Jens Hainmueller examined the use of Chancellor Schröder in the Elbe flood in 2002 ten years ago. He had announced in the Bundestag: “What must be done to eliminate the consequences of the disaster, dear friends, we will do that . And we’ll take the lead. ”

The political scientists came to the conclusion that the SPD was able to gain an average of seven percentage points of votes in the areas affected by the flood. “The candidate was lying in a deck chair,” said SPD man Ludwig Stiegler about CSU challenger Edmund Stoiber. He initially went on vacation to Juist and rejected “flood tourism”. Schröder won the federal election in 2002. It was the famous Schröder moment, also known as the rubber boot moment.

Laschet does not want to know anything about such a comparison. “It doesn’t remind me of that. You can be sure: every Prime Minister who takes his office seriously will be there at such a moment. It doesn’t work without presence. Because Laschet was also asked why he hadn’t come to the crisis region earlier. But if politics gives the impression that they did not come for the sake of the people, but for the sake of their own (re) election, then credibility is the end of the story.

Balancing act in the election campaign

It is a balancing act that also challenges the other candidates for chancellor. Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz will get an idea of ​​the situation together with the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (both SPD), his ministry said. Scholz said: “The people in the disaster area are in need, the damage is immense. The federal government has to lend a hand.”

Green candidate Annalena Baerbock broke off her vacation. “The devastating extent of the floods is staggering,” she said. AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel, however, warned on Twitter as a precaution: “Respect for those affected prohibits this catastrophe from being appropriated for climate propaganda.”

Merkel as a little girl on the radio

After the death of Helmut Schmidt, Merkel told how defining rubber boot moments are. “I still remember exactly how I, as a little girl, and of course my parents in the GDR, literally hung on the radio because we were incredibly worried about our grandmother and aunt in Hamburg.” You had just trusted Helmut Schmidt to get the situation under control.

In 1962 Schmidt was neither chancellor nor candidate, but Senator for the Interior in Hamburg. With a blue light he raced into town “in violation of all traffic rules,” said Schmidt. He also “immediately took a helicopter” and flew the disaster area as a whole. He was just 43 years old at the time. Schmidt called the Bundeswehr to help against the Hamburg storm surge and took over the central operations management for the urban area. “This is my first strong, my very personal memory of Helmut Schmidt,” Merkel said in retrospect.

More climate protection?

As early as 1997, in view of the floods, the Greens demanded that riparian areas should become more natural again, that space was needed for floodplain areas. Kohl put it this way: “We have to give the rivers their space. Otherwise they will take it back, with dire consequences for the people affected.”

Now, two months before the general election, the Greens could show their expertise in environmental and nature conservation. The Union, on the other hand, is vague in its election manifesto when it comes to concrete climate protection measures. And this is what Laschet now sounds like in Hagen. One will be confronted with such events again and again. His conclusions: More speed with climate protection measures – European, nationwide, worldwide. And: “More dynamism for climate protection,” he then says.