Annalena Baerbock
Photo:
Metodi Popow / imago images
40 years young and no government experience?
Difficult to imagine, I hear from my circle of friends.
Many can imagine Robert Habeck as Annalena Baerbock in the Chancellery, women say that too.
"She would be the first to get into the highest office in Germany without any government experience," writes Silke Mertins in the "NZZ am Sonntag" and calls it "a daring experiment".
My colleague Susanne Beyer recently said in a SPIEGEL comment that an important prerequisite for gaining trust in a political figure is knowing their experience.
Here Baerbock was clearly inferior to Habeck: "She never ruled."
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Green double leadership and the K question: For Baerbock, renouncing the candidacy for chancellor would be "a little stab in the heart" by Christoph Hickmann
Of course, the criterion of experience plays a role in the decision at the ballot box.
From this point of view, Robert Habeck has better chances, as the current surveys show.
But does that mean that Baerbock cannot become a good chancellor without experience?
If the corona crisis shows one thing, it is that government experience is overrated.
Who is responsible for Germany getting through the pandemic so badly?
Angela Merkel: Chancellor for 16 years, previously minister for seven years.
Olaf Scholz: Federal Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor for four years, before that Hamburg Senator for the Interior, Federal Minister of Labor, First Mayor of Hamburg.
Armin Laschet, Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia for four years, and State Minister for five years before that.
Markus Söder: Prime Minister for three years, before that eleven years in ministerial offices.
Scholz, Söder and Laschet alone have more than 40 years of government experience.
But although they steered Germany worse than other countries through the greatest crisis of the post-war period, the three gentlemen dare to become chancellors.
The list could be supplemented as desired: Would Jens Spahn, who is just as young as Baerbock, be the better Chancellor because he had already been State Secretary for three years and Federal Minister of Health for three years?
Doubts are allowed.
The example of New Zealand shows that a 40-year-old politician can do an excellent job without any government experience.
Jacinda Adern became Prime Minister there in 2017, previously she was "only" the party leader of the New Zealand Social Democrats.
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New Zealand's successful Prime Minister: Jacinda Ardern, superstar by Dietmar Pieper and Hannes Schrader
Nevertheless, she rules her country with great success.
Apparently, emotional and practical intelligence can make up for a lack of government experience, as the two crises Vern had to deal with show: In March 2019, a right-wing extremist terrorist killed 51 people in two mosques.
Adern showed sympathy by wearing a headscarf and hugging the victims' families.
(For comparison: the German Chancellor was unable to make a comparable gesture despite her long government experience with the relatives of the victims of the NSU murders).
In addition, they tightened the gun law.
Last year, Adern fought the corona pandemic with a tough lockdown, a quarantine obligation for returnees and an entry ban for foreigners.
Up until the election last October, just 25 people had died of corona in New Zealand, and Adern was re-elected with an absolute majority - for the first time in the history of New Zealand proportional representation.
Would Annalena Baerbock as Chancellor manage such crises just as well?
We do not know it.
But their lack of government experience says little about the success or failure of a chancellorship.
"The greater irritation of the usual" emanates from Habeck, writes Susanne Beyer.
I think it would be a confirmation of the usual if the Habeck man prevailed on the K question.
It would also be an indictment of the Greens if a woman let a man go before the Chancellery, of all places.
