Olaf Scholz is a politician who likes to set more or less measurable goals. Even when he sat in a federal government for the first time as Minister of Social Affairs, he demanded that the Federal Employment Agency should be number 1 among job agencies in the world. As Hamburg mayor, he saved the building of the Elbphilharmonie with an irrevocable fixed price and a clear ultimatum. Scholz is now Chancellor, and if you leaf through the coalition agreement at the traffic light, you will again see rows of targets falling: in climate protection, in electromobility, in residential construction.
The corona policy is also teeming with goals. It should be 30 million vaccinations by the end of 2021 or maybe by Christmas, that was just as much a matter of interpretation as the question of whether it should only be about refreshments or whether every spade counts. The Chancellor himself mixed it up here and there. In January, a further 30 million refreshments are to be added, and 80 percent of German citizens have received at least one vaccination – first it was said until January 7th, now Scholz has corrected the target to the end of the month.
Setting goals as a Scholz method
In politics, reaching goals is sometimes not as important as setting goals. It seems ambitious to look closely at certain benchmarks, and if you do it yourself, the advantage is that you can determine the brands yourself before others dictate them. Setting goals often has less to do with the last steps across the line than with the first steps you take to set off. Olaf Scholz also acts according to this method.
The Chancellor will create the first 30 million mark, but he will break the original 80 percent mark. But the real effect that these goals are supposed to help have materialized: Vaccination is once again considered to be a central tool against the pandemic, just as it was a year ago when the campaign began. The circumstances for this are more advantageous today than they were then because, unlike at the end of 2020, there is sufficient vaccine available.
On the other hand, it was more difficult recently to motivate a society that already felt as good as free from the pandemic in the summer and then fell back into crisis mode within a few weeks to participate again. This not only applies to respirators and contact restrictions, it also applies to vaccinations. In addition, the new coalition initially made mistakes with the signals it sent from Freedom Day to the end of the pandemic situation. She was not ahead of her time, but behind.
Pitifully dull communicator
The new Chancellor can now be credited with correcting the wrong direction of his own troops together with Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. By concentrating on the vaccination campaign and setting up a new crisis team with a major general, Scholz set the right signals. Record values for daily vaccination rates, at least before Christmas, and also top positions for the German booster in a European comparison, testify to this. To have achieved this trend reversal is also honorable for a pitifully boring communicator like Scholz. His currently high sympathy ratings show that the citizens prefer to set realistic goals from a boring rather than let an entertainer promise the unattainable.