Steinmeier (on Tuesday in Berlin): He dominates the power business
Photo:
CLEMENS BILAN v EPA
In a few days, the Federal President will be elected in Berlin.
The effort is great, but the result is already certain.
Most of the 1,472 electors will vote for the incumbent.
SPD, Greens, FDP, CDU, CSU: Apparently everyone wants Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Federal Assembly will be as harmonious as Steinmeier's summer party.
But why? It is said that federal presidents have an effect through their words, but with Steinmeier they often lose themselves in nothing. His message of the first five years? It must have been something with not-only-but-also, one-doing-the-other-don't-let-do-it and »building bridges«. During the pandemic, the Federal President temporarily hardly appeared; sometimes he seemed like the ghost of Bellevue Castle.
Steinmeier dominated the power business. By nominating himself for a second term last spring, he kept serious competitors at bay. In Germany it is considered indelicate to attack the head of state politically. There's even a paragraph in the Criminal Code that says you can go to prison for up to five years if you slander the President. Even Friedrich Merz became a Steinmeier supporter, even if the CDU quietly complains that the President didn't even mention Helmut Kohl's name in his speech on 30 years of unity.
But mild criticism is allowed. It is worth remembering that Steinmeier stays out of day-to-day political issues, but took a surprisingly clear position in the debate on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In an interview with the »Rheinische Post«, he sided with his former superior Gerhard Schröder and called for good »energy relations«. One must also think of the many Soviet victims of the Second World War. Putin's gas pipe, a project for peace and international understanding: One can guess how pleased Russia's president was with his German counterpart.
Last summer, Steinmeier traveled to the flooded area in Erftstadt together with the CDU's top candidate, Armin Laschet.
When Steinmeier spoke up front, Laschet cackled at a joke at the back.
At a memorial event!
In the middle of the disaster area!
Germany was outraged by such tactlessness.
Laschet crashed in the polls.
However, the event in Erftstadt went even further.
At some point Laschet spoke and Steinmeier stood in the background.
And lo and behold: the President grinned too and seemed to be having a good time.
There are photos of both scenes.
But for only one they became a scandal;
Virtually nobody got upset about Steinmeier.
Bad luck for Laschet that Steinmeier did nothing to clarify the matter either.
The Left Party announced this week that it would nominate its own candidate for the presidential election, Gerhard Trabert, a non-party social medicine doctor and doctor for the homeless.
The man has no chance, but I wish him a respectable result.