Olaf Scholz evades clear announcements. With success. For how much longer?

It can be frank or full, so that no further questions remain unanswered. Clear announcements, Olaf Scholz can do that. If he wants to. Often he doesn’t want that. Not in public, anyway.

As Federal Chancellor, Scholz wants to be a doer and not someone who spreads verbally unnecessarily. “I want to shape a style there,” he said in the. “It should be about doing, not the show.” What does he do when he first steps into his office as Chancellor? “I’ll get to work”,.

Now he is Federal Chancellor. For a long time nobody had expected this,. Scholz was considered written off, acted so silently during the election campaign that the competition hardly took any notice of him – and the SPD candidate fell victim to it. He didn’t attract attention, not even negatively. And if you don’t get noticed negatively, you instill trust. That was his strategy, the Chancellery his premium.

But now the strategy seems to have reached its limits. The corona crisis has awakened a desire for clarity that calls for more than the mechanical unwinding of statements, for which he is considered, and balancing around a resilient perspective that now offers the opposition a surface to attack.

“Then Olaf Scholz doesn’t just have to speak, he also has to say something”

When does the general compulsory vaccination come? Probably not as quickly as Scholz would like it to be. His, a compulsory vaccination should apply until “beginning of March” in Germany. What that means and how it will continue remains a nebulous one. The Union sees an opportunity in this: “Valuable time is wasted”, “Scholz ducks away”,. Does Scholz duck rhetorically?

At least he often answers questions evasively. The advantage: Anyone who remains vague cannot be pinned to anything concrete. The disadvantage: It runs counter to the image of the creative designer.

“Every sentence you say as a politician has to be said in such a way that everyone understands it, even if he wasn’t there,” Scholz once explained why he answers the way he answers. Scholz wants to stay in control and prevent his quotes from becoming independent.

But saying only the bare essentials also runs the risk of giving more weight to each syllable. And those who are a bit louder ring longer in the ear – such as Scholz’s time schedule for the general vaccination requirement.

His predecessor Angela Merkel (CDU) also liked to let unpleasant questions roll off, which shaped her image as a calm and objective crisis manager – but also. “Scholz tops his predecessor here because he simply ignores unpleasant questions, several times in a row if necessary,” says political scientist Thomas Jäger from the University of Cologne stern. “The question is whether Chancellor Scholz can continue this kind of thing.”

This is supported by the fact that many citizens seem to be very patient. At least the Chancellor remains popular, as a recent one shows: Scholz ranks third, behind Merkel (1) and SPD Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (2). “What speaks against this is the fact that his election – and, at the same time, the election of Friedrich Merz as party chairman – signal that the population wants a change,” said Jäger. . “As long as the polls are good, Scholz will speak the way he got into office. Whether it will stay that way for four years is an open question.”

It’s a rhetorical moose test. If the pending problems are solved, Scholz should stay in the lane, if they burst open he could fly out of the curve. “If the previous government’s low-ambition crisis management continues, things can go well,” says political scientist Jäger. “If the new federal government undertakes real changes, a gap arises into which politics must be declared. Then the Chancellor not only has to speak, but also say something.”

Because communication and political action have to be compatible with one another, hit a nerve so that they also evoke support. What’s next in the fight against the pandemic? Will the economy grow again? Is the energy supply secured? Questions to which answers are expected. If these remain within the framework of collective acceptance, according to the expert, Scholz’s style could become “a cult”. “If political developments lead to dissatisfaction and protests, this species will be seen as arrogant aloofness.”