Annalena Baerbock’s disaster Sunday in a television interview

Annalena Baerbock has just experienced what a miserable job politics can be. It was the Sunday before the inauguration of the new American president. It was also the Sunday on which, after many months and tough negotiations, Israeli hostages were finally freed from Hamas control. The Foreign Minister had agreed to two major television interviews for that day. The opportunity seemed good.

Baerbock is practiced at praising himself. Now she may have been hoping for public recognition for her hard work in the Middle East, which can be seen in her many trips, although it is difficult to assess what role it actually played in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. She could have shown whether she has a convincing idea for future German-American relations – core foreign policy business, in the middle of the election campaign.

It was a television Sunday that Baerbock probably wouldn’t want to experience again: On ZDF she was questioned intensively about the case of a Green Bundestag member in Berlin. Stefan Gelbhaar had actually been pressured into not running again because of allegations of sexual harassment; These have now largely proven to be unfounded. The Gelbhaar case is a debacle for Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, which had to withdraw important parts of its reporting, but also for the Greens, from whose ranks the allegations were made. And as much as Baerbock is right in arguing that there are procedures and committees for such questions in every party, what was astonishing was the complete lack of empathy with which the otherwise emotional minister ignored the case of her party friend, whose political career was at an end could be.

That’s not enough. Hours later, Caren Miosga on ARD did not immediately ask Baerbock about foreign policy, but rather about the proposal by the Green candidate for chancellor Robert Habeck to raise health insurance contributions on capital income. Unlike before on ZDF, Baerbock now spoke in detail, but also in a very confusing way.

What does it all mean? This is not about Baerbock as a person, but rather about the Greens sending their most important woman in front of an audience of millions in the middle of the election campaign without giving her sensible and understandable answers to expected questions. It’s not about pinning an as-yet-unsolved but dramatic case of political bullying on the Green top candidates, but rather that Baerbock and Habeck should strive for clarification if they want to live up to their own demands for transparency.

It’s not about whether the Greens have presented an idea for financing the health system that’s worth discussing, but rather about the fact that they are intoxicated by the supposed greatness of their idea, but that participating in the debate about the details apparently seems beneath them.

The point is that the top candidates, of all people, unfortunately confirm the widespread cliché of green aloofness, the accusation of a general feeling of moral superiority from which the air escapes when political competition “pricks in”, as the Foreign Minister put it disparagingly.

Baerbock dismissed allegations of political competition as an election campaign. True. That is exactly the problem to which she and Habeck have no answer.