“New York Times” gossip about the German election campaign (and Olaf Scholz)

Since 2005 there have been 63 articles in the “New York Time” archive in which the words “Merkel, Wahl, Charisma” appear. Noticeably many have to do with right-wing populists, but around half of the cases are about the Chancellor: “The prime ministers of the federal states would also accept the deal, because Merkel has made too many mistakes for their taste and has no charisma”, it says in a piece about the Union from 16 years ago. Now is the election campaign again, the well-known US paper has again gone in search of charisma and has once again failed to find what it is looking for.

Lack of Charisma, Lack of Leadership?

“The election campaign reveals how bland the two candidates to succeed Angela Merkel are. Whoever wins will guard Europe’s largest economy, which makes this person the most important politician Charisma will likely result in a lack of leadership, “asks. The lead picture of their article shows Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet visiting the flood areas – the top SPD man looks troubled from jeans and a functional jacket, his CDU colleague is wearing a short coat and leather shoes.

Despite the climate crisis, corona pandemic, Afghanistan disaster and generally a decades-old reform plug, the election campaign in 2021 does not want to gain momentum. The TV trio with Scholz, Laschet and the Green candidate Annalena Baerbock has not sparked any great euphoria either; maybe every country will only get the prime ministerial candidates it deserves. “It’s a shaking game in the German way: Who is most likely to ensure stability and continuity? Or in other words: Who is emulating Ms. Merkel?” Asks the “NYT” dryly.

Our predilection for boredom

The answer comes with the sheet. In a mixture of amazement and amusement, the author uses the example of Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz to describe the German preference for the boring politician. Not necessarily in her own words, why should she? After all, she has various key witnesses ready as evidence. “The most popular guy in the election campaign is also the most boring guy – maybe even in the whole country. Boiling water is exciting against him,” says the former US ambassador in Berlin, John Kornblum. And Oxford professor Timothy Garton Ash seconded it with the words: “There are only a few countries that reward being barren.”

Of course, texts about German sensitivities rarely get along without reference to the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler. In the case of the “NYT” it is Jan Böhmermann who recalls the dark past: “Hitler’s election victory shaped Germany’s post-war democracy in various ways and one of them is that charisma is banned from politics,” says the comedian. On the other hand, the apparently remarkable penchant for objectivity can also be described in the words of Berlin political scientist Andrea Römmele: “A character like Donald Trump would never become chancellor here.”

And where the author is already about to dive into the depths of the German electorate’s soul, the names Konrad Adenauer (“No experiments”) and Helmut Schmidt (“If you have visions, should go to the doctor”) should not be missing. Or Markus Söder. The newspaper attests that he has “a lot of beer-time charisma”, but unfortunately the Union people preferred him to the “continuity candidate” Armin Laschet, who, in turn, ironically, was overtaken by Olaf Scholz’s left wing in terms of stability.

A touch of longing

But both candidates do not come out of nowhere. “They are chosen by their partisans, who tend to choose people who are like themselves: career politicians,” writes the NYT journalist. Together with the German preference for stable boredom, the result is election campaigners who “even in times when the world is in crisis, give voters the feeling that everything is okay in Germany,” Katrin quotes the British researcher Garton Ash. A touch of longing shimmers through her words.

Those: “”