Nico Fried on the short half-life of political resolutions

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Fried – The Politics Column
Politicians come out of the summer break with good intentions – Nico Fried knows that these are quickly passé

In his current column star Author Nico Fried on the durability of political resolutions

© Illustration: Sebastian König/Stern; Photo: Henning Kretschmer/Stern

Nico Fried

In his weekly column Nico Fried analyzes for the star the Berlin political establishment. This time it’s about the short half-life of political resolutions – and the question of the chancellor of the Union.

The most beautiful thing about the parliamentary Summer break is the anticipation of its end. You may be surprised, dear readers, because you are actually quite happy when the newspapers don’t talk about the shortcomings of the traffic light coalition every day. If the FDP and the Greens don’t constantly accuse each other like the children in the schoolyard: “But they started it!” If, as a TV viewer, you don’t see the photo of Olaf Scholz in the opening credits of the “Tagesschau” every evening and wonder what he probably didn’t say about it again today.

That’s all very understandable, and it’s no different for us journalists. Especially after such intensive professional months, you are sometimes downright surprised by changes in your personal environment. For example, who is this young lady who now lives with us? Ah, my daughter! Look, grown up. It’s also nice to have a glass of red wine with your wife under the starry sky in summer and not with the chancellor and colleagues after midnight at some hotel bar in the so-called global South.

The end of the summer break

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to it when it starts again. Politicians always come back from the summer holidays with many good intentions, which, to their chagrin, but in favor of our notepads, dissolve within days. Then you remember why you became a journalist. What went wrong should go better, less cacophony, more discipline.

Yes, you think.

Let’s just take the Union. The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz does not want to talk about the chancellor candidacy until late summer 2024. He recently made it clear that late summer will last “until the end of September”. He must have learned that from Angela Merkel, who promised in January 2021 that by the end of summer there would be a corona vaccine for everyone, adding: “The end of summer – I say this so that we don’t argue about it any further – is purely calendar-related September 21.”

The Union and the K question

But back to the chancellor candidacy, with which Merkel no longer has anything to do, even if one could imagine that the number of those in the Union who regret this is growing again. The chancellor candidacy, that’s how they decided to do it together, clarified Merz with the CSU chairman Markus Söder in a conversation in which the two will look almost as deeply into each other’s eyes as my wife and I have with red wine. And until then no one in the Union is talking about this issue?

At this point, Andreas Hoidn-Borchers, a colleague who is both well-deserved and educated, would quote Bertolt Brecht’s song about human inadequacy from “The Threepenny Opera”:

“Yes, just make a plan

Just be a great light

And then make a second plan

Neither of them go!”

Because the discussion has long since begun (star-readers know more!). And even if Union politicians should pull themselves together in the next few weeks, it will flare up again at the latest on the evening of the state elections in Bavaria and Hesse on October 8th – and if you want to know exactly, in the first television interview with CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann briefly after 6 p.m. Something like this: “Mr. Linnemann, what do these results mean for the question of the chancellor candidacy?”

Ah, it’s going to be wonderful! When is it finally autumn?

Nico Fried looks forward to hearing from you. Send him an email to [email protected]

Published in stern 34/2023

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