Enlarge image
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / picture alliance / dpa
Olaf Scholz gives even more dreary speeches in the Bundestag than Angela Merkel, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier has probably never sparked a big political spark either.
Neither is completely new, but on the occasion of the latter extension of service, the usual suspects bring the usual complaints: the CDU and CSU should therefore leave no stone unturned to block the fleshly average person a second term of office as Federal President.
I also read at this point that after 16 years of Angela Merkel, for a change, I wouldn't mind a little charisma (in the Chancellery). But if you take a look around the European neighborhood at the beginning of the year, you can just as easily determine: Maybe that's not so bad with this German average. Perhaps mediocrity is the price of honesty, and that would be fine with me for the time being. The Europe-wide political and post empirical evidence increasingly suggests that honesty and sparkling brilliance in leadership do not go well with one another.
In Great Britain Boris Johnson is a notorious liar Prime Minister, but he is a real force as a speaker in parliament and as a politically macho man.
In terms of education, intellectual brilliance and beefy entertainment value, he is light years ahead of Scholz and Steinmeier.
These qualities have brought him to the top of the island, because they count there.
Alone: Neither humanly nor politically you can rely on Johnson, and that should weigh more heavily, especially for conservatives.
more on the subject
Right-wing extremist presidential candidate Zemmour: Why is an Islam-hater, sexist and apocalyptic so popular in France? By Britta Sandberg, Paris
In France, Éric Zemmour, a promising candidate for the presidential election, will soon be running, whose views would probably not find political acceptance anywhere in Germany, except in the NPD. In surveys, he had meanwhile overtaken Marine Le Pen, which represents something like the AfD variant of the French far-right epidemic. Zemmour is intelligent, has considerable pulling power and a master of public debate that sparkles in florets: the French journalists have fallen for him in disgust. Politically, Zemmour wants to kick every foreigner out of the country if he or she has not worked for six months. He is in favor of revoking offenders with a migration background their French citizenship in order, you suspect, to throw them out of the country immediately.Asylum should only be granted to "a handful" of people per year so that, of course, no foreigners come into the country who would be thrown out of the country again. His goal is a flawless France that despises everything that is not French and large and from the good old days. As I said, the man could be president in the middle of the year if the boyish charm of Emmanuel Macron doesn't pull again. It would be a disaster.
But that also means: as long as a political landscape continues to produce little Merkels, Steinmeiers and Scholzs, it would be incapable of such a catastrophe à la française, both systemically and in terms of personnel policy.
As the maximum combination of academic education, rhetorical talent and right wing program, we have Hans-Georg Maaßen in Germany.
It's kind of funny, but also very good news, isn't it?
Of course there are quite a few in Germany who would like an alert high-flyer like Sebastian Kurz as Chancellor for Germany.
There are actually milieus that aestheticize everything and believe that leadership must be fascinating, otherwise it is none.
But the Viennese beloved also fell immediately because of his character deficits, which also does not put those offending him in a good light.
In the case of Merkel, Steinmeier or Scholz, on the other hand, one would always dare to bet that they would not end up in the public coffers, but rather govern honestly, with God not error-free, but halfway scandal-free. This cannot be said of many of the European heads of state and government, let alone Donald Trump. In our country, the former heads of government therefore expect retirement, elsewhere it should be jail.
When the "peaceful transition" from one federal government to the next was internationally praised after the federal election, not a few grinned slightly embarrassed, including me. Such transitions between two government majorities, which are not fundamentally different, are no longer a matter of course, even in our neighborhood, because everything is more and more important there: objectively, that was the case with the British Brexit vote. In France, twelve weeks from now, the presidential election will be about everything, really everything, from the perspective of the camps, and that's probably true from the point of view of Europe too. In Poland it is also true that it is about the European or Catholic-nationalist character of the country. In Hungary it's about everythingif Viktor Orbán wins the upcoming parliamentary election again and finally forms the country into its "illiberal democracy" and not only can wrap up the independent press. You could also talk about Italy and all the things that weigh on Mario Draghi there.
Perhaps it has something to do with my age, but for the time being I am praising myself for the lukewarm, well-tempered German politics.
No drama - there is worse evidence of a political system.
I think that some debates, especially about climate protection, should be conducted earlier and more pointedly, with more spirit, wit and bite.
But good and bright, which you should see at the beginning of the year, that is: If you oversleep an important election in Germany, you don't have to be afraid of waking up the next morning.
