Chancellor Olaf Scholz has one of the toughest jobs in Germany right now: as head of government, keeping the Federal Republic stable between the risk of war, a sense of proportion and its own energy supply, while also promoting the climate change and orchestrating the next stage of the pandemic, all that and much more requires an almost inhuman workload. The almost uncanny calm that Scholz showed in his public appearances and just for an hour with Anne Will is probably just as much a form of stress management as his arrogance, which is sometimes difficult to bear.
“The chancellor is doing everything right, says the chancellor,” headlined the SZ on Monday, and this formulation contains the necessary pinch of mockery that Scholz was actually always capable of, but that as war chancellor he hardly likes to show anymore. So much self-control is understandable, it’s just a shame that Scholz doesn’t really advertise for the people he has to take with him on the way to an uncertain future.
The attitude of “I do everything right – always, and now too”, perhaps put on display for self-protection, can take revenge. You saw that with the last SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who imposed unreasonable demands on the citizens with Agenda 2010 without ever really explaining them. In doing so, he caused serious damage to this fundamentally correct and, by the way, successful labor market reform right from the start, as well as to his party and ultimately to himself.
Refinery in Schwedt: Economists say Germany can afford an oil and gas embargo against Russia. The Chancellor prefers to listen to managers – who would like to have cheap energy.
(Photo: Imago/Jochen Eckel)
It gets really annoying when the know-it-all Scholz simply takes important players out of the game, which is currently happening to German economists. If some of these “with mathematical models” calculated that Germany could afford an oil and gas embargo, then for Scholz this is simply wrong, even “irresponsible”. Scholz doesn’t need any mathematical models, of course he doesn’t, he just knows what’s right: If “these imports didn’t materialize from one day to the next, it would mean that entire branches of industry would have to stop working,” and it’s about “an unbelievable number Jobs” – as if the state were not able to help with short-time work benefits, for example, and as if the German economy had not repeatedly proven itself to be adaptable in crises.
Merkel had a clearer view: she didn’t believe managers at all at first
And then Scholz drops the telltale sentence from where he knows all this so precisely: from “business representatives” who are familiar with reality, he says. They have to be some kind of supermen (women, from experience, rarely) whose word you can rely on, so there’s no need for a second opinion. Scholz is thus taking on a bad exercise that can also be observed in the TV talks: When it comes to explaining what makes sense in terms of economic policy, tax policy and labor market policy, then entrepreneurs and managers are often invited as supposed experts. In reality, they are first and foremost representatives of their company’s interests, they know their way around, and their well-being is their primary concern – and rightly so.
Of course, it will be difficult for many companies to get by with less energy, and of course they warn about this situation, every week, in various rounds with the federal government. With such constant noise, it is not surprising that Chancellor Scholz believes everything he is told. In any case, his predecessor Angela Merkel, against whose policies one can say a lot in connection with the current dependency on Russia, always had a clearer view. At first she didn’t believe the business representatives at all, but protected herself several times by, for example, also taking advice from scientists.
Incidentally, one can argue about the calculations of some economists mentioned by Scholz, and that also happens in the guild. The debate serves to sharpen the arguments. Scholz should listen. Instead, he dismisses science in a blanket manner that is below his level.