The FDP leader could have trumpeted in Stuttgart at the Epiphany. The fact that he gives a moderate speech instead shows that he has learned from past mistakes.
It was two years ago that Christian Lindner got into trouble shortly after the three kings meeting of the liberals. The election of an FDP Prime Minister with votes from the AfD in Thuringia presented him with the greatest crisis of his time as party leader. At that time he also saved what the FDP was otherwise often accused of: that the party at the top consisted only of Lindner and therefore there was no one who could have been a competitor to him. In this situation, it was unlikely that Lindner would say hello from the stage of the Stuttgart Opera House as Federal Minister of Finance in January 2022.
It speaks for the FDP leader that he has refrained from any triumphalism this year. That had always been a problem of his predecessors in the past, be it with Guido Westerwelle after the election success in 2009 or with Philipp Rösler after he forced a Federal President Joachim Gauck on Angela Merkel. Lindner couldn’t have had a big party this time anyway because the auditorium in Stuttgart was empty due to Corona. That may also have slowed down the speaker. But the party leader has not only managed it now, but for weeks now, to act self-confidently without taking himself and the party too seriously. For the first time in his career, Lindner makes a tidy impression.
It is still not possible to say today whether this is really the result of a maturation or just a snapshot, fed by good results in the election and in the coalition negotiations. The second bad thing of the Liberals besides their arrogance has been their tendency to be offended quickly in recent years. When the corona pandemic turned against the premature optimism of the FDP in the weeks after the federal election, this liver sausage reappeared in isolated cases. If Lindner gets that under control, he can really claim that he has advanced the FDP.