Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag: This man only knows attacks

His opponents shouldn’t underestimate one thing: Olaf Scholz loves election campaigns. He answered questions from members of the Bundestag for an hour on Wednesday. Actually as chancellor, but in reality as a candidate for chancellor. There was no sign of humility, no sign of self-criticism. Promises not kept? It was due to the circumstances. Mistake? Only others always do it.

Scholz presented himself in election campaign mode from A for attack to Z for strike back. After Friedrich Merz, Robert Habeck and Alice Weidel, the Chancellor may be the latecomer among the candidates for Chancellor, the one who had to overcome the greatest doubts in his own shop. But he is definitely the first whose engine is already running at full speed. And the man is having fun too.

At the beginning of the government survey, Scholz appeared statesmanlike. The time until the new elections should not be a phase of standstill. The opposition should please support him if several laws to relieve the burden on citizens are called for in the near future: cold progression, child benefit and child allowance, Germany ticket, rent cap and electricity prices. The Chancellor, apparently completely non-partisan.

What Scholz actually intended with this list was, of course, to give the opposition a look into the arsenal of weapons. Every project in which the Union does not participate, he obviously wants to hang Friedrich Merz personally like a iron collar before dragging him into the pillory: Look here, citizens, this man doesn’t begrudge you anything.

What can the Union do to counter this? CDU MP Julia Klöckner, once agriculture minister in the same cabinet as Olaf Scholz as finance minister, wants to know what happened to the economic miracle that Scholz promised during his chancellorship. Given zero growth, the Chancellor can hardly claim that this miracle really exists. But why is that? not There are plenty of reasons for this: weak global economic demand, the Russian war against Ukraine, high energy prices – and of course all the bureaucracy that CDU governments have built up, as well as the blockade by the Union parties on the expansion of renewable energies . Wait a minute, isn’t there something missing? Failures of his government? There isn’t.

None of this has anything to do with him or his economics minister. Find Scholz. The many investments would still pay off. The fact that some of them, such as around 600 million euros at the battery manufacturer Northvolt, are already almost gone does not mean that such strategic subsidies are fundamentally wrong, says Scholz. In any case, he doesn’t want to throw out his Economics Minister Robert Habeck: “I don’t plan to do that and I won’t do that either.”

The same picture in the Bundeswehr. Scholz also gets personal: Merkel, Schäuble, Guttenberg, they have decided that the Bundeswehr should be saved and conscription should be abolished. About his own blockade as finance minister towards defense projects? No speech. Scholz simply destroys every suggestion. Only now that a Social Democrat is in charge again in the Ministry of Defense is the Bundeswehr doing really well again, praises Scholz. Boris Pistorius sits diagonally behind the Chancellor on the government bench and nods eagerly. Incidentally, the SPD’s candidate for chancellor by a hair is the only real federal minister who made an effort to attend the boss’s question time in the Bundestag. One heart and one soul. People are apparently supposed to believe that there is no match between Scholz and Pistorius, as has often been claimed among social democratic alpha males.

So this is the situation as the Chancellor sees it. And for every wrong there is someone to blame. Just never Scholz. The fact that the draft law for the rent brake is only now available is the fault of the FDP. The fact that too little building land is allocated is also the fault of the Left Party in many places. That there are some things wrong with citizens’ money: The Union has approved the law in its current version.

The issue of Ukraine still remains. Scholz reports that he spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev for a “very, very long time.” “Two and a half hours” and “very intense”. Nobody should get the idea that the Chancellor is already being treated like a discontinued model in Ukraine. And all the critics in European capitals who publicly complained about his phone call with Vladimir Putin? Scholz claims that no one repeated this in direct conversation with him. The Taurus will not exist for Ukraine, nor will German soldiers “in this war situation.”

Scholz brushes off FDP MP Marcus Faber, who tries to provoke the Chancellor with the repeated phrase “your successor,” with the words: “You are perfect for a party that is struggling with the five percent hurdle pretty brave.” And the Chancellor doesn’t forget to add something else so that even the last doubter gets it: “I also want to become my own successor.” Who would have thought.