Robert Habeck: The helplessness of a failed

The program lasts more than an hour, it goes into the final round. Robert Habeck talked a lot and strangled even more, with himself, the parties, the media and this damn complicated world. Now moderator Markus Lanz asks him a somewhat more difficult question: whether he is in favor of sending German soldiers to Ukraine as peace soldiers?

Habeck smiles wrong, jerky around in his armchair and says: “I will soon no longer be a member of the parliament”. He wanted “this debate to be properly managed”. It is “a service”, “a victim”, “a political question of order”, which, especially as the father of four sons, rather heavy trap.

It is not an answer. The man who wanted to become the Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany obviously has no idea how he would decide in national security interest. Or he doesn’t want to tell them.

Either way: If you should regret that Habeck does not governing this country, the program “Markus Lanz” should look at from Wednesday evening. Because there is not a prevented chancellor to look at, but an obviously failed politician who seems to have lost his basic trust in the political system of Germany. He doubts and desperately, in itself and the political company, the part of which he was over two decades. That looks disoriented. And at least temporarily gave up.

With the structures “that we have political”, the problems that should be solved could not be solved, says Habeck. “I walked, run, run. Now I say: stop! Stop!”

The prevented chancellor sits in the black suit and an open white shirt in the television studio that evening to explain again why he will soon give up his parliamentary mandate. In an Instagram video, he had communicated in typical prose at the beginning of the week: “Sometimes you have to close doors so that new ones open up.” He is now closing a door, “but I am sure that new doors will open up”.

An interview appeared in the “taz”. He said, he said, did not run over the corridors as “a ghost” like “a ghost”. “I want a new story.”

The new history should initially consist of teaching and research stays in Denmark and the USA. He doesn’t know what comes after that, says Habeck on Wednesday evening. “In a certain sense, the path also ran out.” There is no plan. A lot is possible.

Also a return to politics? Habeck remains with the expected inquiries in the approximate. He remains a “political being,” he says. In any case, this is not a “tactical farewell”, but “a clear cut”.

Habeck was 56 in September, he still has a good decade of life until the 67th retirement in 2004. The stations: Green head of state in Schleswig-Holstein, chairman of the parliamentary group in the Kiel state parliament, state environment and agricultural minister. Then CEO of the Greens, Federal Minister of Economics and Vice Chancellor – and Chancellor candidate. That went wrong. The 11.6 percent, 3.1 percentage points less than three years earlier, means the return to the opposition for his party. And for him the preliminary end of the career.

So now the waiver of mandate. But why exactly again? Habeck is faced several times in the show with the fact that many people had chosen him and other former ministers worked in parliamentary committees. Isn’t that the more honest handling of the mandate of the sovereign?

The question is “totally justified,” replied Habeck, in order to speak, like in the “taz”, that he was chosen for “a certain political idea”. He was posted as a “alliance chancellor” and not as a member of the Federal Foreign Committee.

Robert Habeck, otherwise it can hardly be interpreted, sees himself as an exception to which the traditional rules cannot be applied: he realized that what his supporters awaited from him could only achieve “outside of the expectation room”.

The longer Habeck talks, the stronger the impression that he is exactly what he expressly does not want to be after his statements: offended. It fits that in the “taz” interview he described the CDU Bundestag president Julia Klöckner as a “mislontiner” and accused her of splitting society, “whether willful or out of stupidity”. And that he said about the Bavarian CSU head of government: “Markus Söder’s fetish sausage eating is not a policy.”

At “Markus Lanz”, Habeck is moderate and answers the inevitable inquiries. He says to Söder: “It is no secret that we don’t particularly appreciate ourselves.” And to Klöckner: “It is difficult for her to defend respect in front of the parliament.” The debate she triggered damages the office of Bundestag president.

But actually Habeck really doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. He prefers to talk about the great “perplexity, as I should go on now”, in this world full of warmongers and democracy.

Maybe it is the case that Robert Habeck feels a little disoriented. Now that he no longer has to lead the Greens, a Ministry or even Germany, he can do what he obviously does best: looking for himself. Of course very self -reflected. But also a little self -righteous.