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Laschet in the ZDF summer interview: Is that how you become Chancellor?
Photo: Marius Becker / ZDF
That's the way it is in politics: things happen that are beyond your control.
Angela Merkel can tell a lot about it, so many unexpected things have happened in the almost 16 years of her chancellorship.
The only question is how politicians react to the unexpected.
Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet wanted to take a vacation at Lake Constance, like every summer, read crime novels, at least relax a little before the federal election campaign slowly entered its hot phase.
Then the tide came.
Of course, the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister canceled his vacation after parts of North Rhine-Westphalia were submerged in the flood, 29 cities and districts in the state were affected and at least 47 people died.
Since then, Laschet has been frequently out and about in the flood areas of his state, stimulating aid and measures from the state government at the same time.
But anyone who expected a decisive political reaction from the CDU chief to the flood disaster, which without a doubt has to do with climate change, will be disappointed again on Sunday.
After Laschets’s ZDF summer interview, disappointment should also spread among the Bavarian sister party CSU: Although Bavaria got off lightly in terms of the flood compared to North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, party leader and Prime Minister Markus Söder promptly had pithy words and announcements responded, first via government clarification, then via the CSU government program.
And Laschet?
When asked on ZDF whether the CDU and CSU had slept through a lot in the fight against climate change, he said: "I would not relate that to the Union alone." And with that, the subject is dealt with again.
Söder warns again of the sleeping car election campaign
Before the CSU presented its additional substantive demands for the Bundestag election campaign on Friday at Tegernsee, party leader Söder had once again warned emphatically against trying to drag himself into the Chancellery somehow.
"It is very important that we document in the next few weeks that it is not just about driving to the Chancellery in a sleeping car, at slow speed," said Söder - the addressee could only be someone who was in April Race for the Union's candidacy for chancellor had prevailed against him.
But it looks like Laschet is not even thinking of changing his strategy.
And maybe he can't do it at all: In his political career - unlike Söder - Armin Laschet never sought the big effect, did not make any spectacular U-turns, as the CSU boss has done time and again.
Laschet just kept going.
And he apparently wants to do that for the remaining two months until the federal election, in the hope that the citizens will vote for the Union in sufficient numbers and that he will be able to succeed Chancellor Merkel in the end.
The exciting question is whether this plan works.
Of course, he annoys that he lost sympathy points in the past week, especially because of his laugh captured by cameras and cameras in Erftstadt on Saturday eight days ago, while Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke to the flood victims a few meters away.
Laschet was particularly annoyed by this mistake himself, for which he immediately apologized.
In the ZDF interview, the CDU boss says: "It was stupid." And: "It shouldn't be and I regret it."
Laschet and his people hope that the matter will diffuse after the multiple mea culpa.
But they really hope that the excitement about the flood disaster and its climate-political causes will quickly subside.
"I would like to come to topics now," says the Union Chancellor candidate in the ZDF summer interview, because Germany is facing so many challenges in the coming years.
But for Laschet, facing this does not mean making clear statements, but rather giving the voters the feeling: I will take care of it, do not worry.
Right, that's how Angela Merkel ruled for a good decade and a half.
Is the Merkel principle enough to become chancellor?
But is that also how you become chancellor?
In any case, Laschet did not hear any stipulations in controversial issues on this Sunday either: If the CSU boss demands that the coal phase-out must come sooner than in 2038, unlike in complex negotiations in a separate commission, says the chancellor candidate: "We should stay on schedule «, politics must be reliable. And then: "Personally, I think the phase-out will be faster because of the CO2 price."
Or the issue of tax relief, on which the CSU is also pushing.
"We are also close together on the tax issue," says Laschet unmoved.
There is "in principle no tax cut program," that much is clear.
But: “If they can be financed, we are in favor of relieving the burden on small and medium incomes, that's also what I just mentioned with the CSU, until 2023, that would be in the middle of the electoral term, should this relief be for families come."
Understood?
If the Germans expect clear determinations from the Union Chancellor candidate in this election campaign, there should be a rude awakening for Laschet on September 26th.
About Hans-Georg Maaßen, whose CDU Bundestag candidacy in southern Thuringia causes excitement almost every week because the long-standing President of the Constitutional Protection repeatedly frightens the public and his party with right-wing foreign statements, Laschet sounds unusually clear at first: He indirectly denies Maaßen any support .
"Well, I don't give election recommendations for 299 constituencies and I support certain candidates I campaign for," he says.
But then the Aachener Laschet adds: "In the constituency itself it is decided who the candidate is."
In keeping with the Rhenish wisdom: "Et kütt wie et kütt."
Corona distancing from head of the Chancellery Braun is only half
And even Laschet's alleged distancing from Chancellery chief Helge Braun, who has just proposed restrictions for non-vaccinated people in the Corona debate, is at most half a time.
Laschet emphasizes that the principle that you either have to be vaccinated, tested or recovered in order to do certain things has to persist.
But a high vaccination rate, which Braun wants to push with his advance, is of course correct.
Laschet rejects the idea of the head of the chancellery only for the moment.
"When we see in autumn that the vaccination rate is still far too low, I think, we have to think further."
"It would still have jot jejange" is another sentence from the home of the Union Chancellor candidate.
Laschet apparently wants to put him to the test personally before the general election.
