THESE ARE HISTORIC TIMES FOR Germany. Angela Merkel is set to become the nation’s first female chancellor. She’ll also be the first chancellor from the former East Germany. So how excited are her constituents? “She’s a cold fish,” says one of her fellow Christian Democrats (who asked to remain nameless).
Merkel was said to be emotionless when she told reporters last week, “We have decided that I’ll be chancellor.” Since this marks the Christian Democrats’ return to power after a seven-year hiatus, one might have expected balloons and fireworks. But as one political scientist described the scene to the Washington Post, “It was like she was announcing her own funeral.”
And, in a way, she was. Merkel planned on leading a “black-yellow” government comprising the Christian Democratic Union (black) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, along with the Free Democratic party (yellow). All the CDU/CSU needed was 40 percent of the vote on September 18. Instead, they obtained a mere 35.2 percent. And although the FDP won 9.8 percent of the vote, it wasn’t nearly enough for a governing majority between them.
After much haggling, the Christian Democrats decided to join forces with their long-standing rival, the Social Democrats, and forge a so-called Grand Coalition. Not that there’s anything grand about it. The last such coalition lasted from 1966 to 1969 before getting voted out. No doubt Angela Merkel is conscious of this, and the fact that then-chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger never recovered.
Claus Gramckow, the acting director of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Washington, gives this second Grand Coalition two years at most. “If you look back at the last such coalition, both major parties were looking at each other and positioning themselves for the time afterward. Everybody looked at this as a transitional government.” Gramckow, whose foundation is associated with the Free Democratic party, points out how quickly the political landscape can change: “In two years’ time, the SPD may go further left and the CDU might seriously look at Jamaica”–not the island, but a coalition of the CDU, FDP, and the Greens (black, yellow, and green being the colors of the Jamaican flag).
Also giving the new regime two years at best is Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund. “The last Grand Coalition lasted three years, and they were in greater agreement on things than the two sides are today,” she says. “What we are talking about now is the [changing] of the foundations of the German welfare state. . . . This is literally about reshaping the postwar republic. Germans don’t change that kind of thing lightly and I think it might take more of a crisis or even sort of an economic shock for them to do that.”
Of the few issues the coalition partners have agreed upon, two signify compromises by the Christian Democrats. Tax reform, which Merkel campaigned on heavily, has been watered down. In addition, “collective bargaining,” or the loosening of labor laws so as to reduce the power of unions, has also been shelved.
“There is still a reluctance in large majorities within the Christian and Social Democrats . . . to implement crucial labor market reform,” says Stelzenmüller. “There are entrepreneurial elements in both parties, and I think that includes Angela Merkel, but if she doesn’t have enough people to support her on that, it is going to be extremely difficult” to effect change.
According to Marcus Pindur of Deutschlandradio, “The election outcome proved that the German electorate is not ready for change and the initial costs that will involve. Politicians will be very cautious about confronting voters with rapid, meaningful change. Germany is a consensus-oriented society. Change instills fear, not hope.”
Despite the loss of outgoing chancellor Gerhard Schröder, some are still promoting his incremental approach to reform, known as Agenda 2010. One proponent of this plan is Kurt Beck, the popular governor of Rhineland-Palatinate and deputy chairman of the Social Democratic party. “We had already started major reforms,” Beck insists. He credits the competitiveness of the German economy to tax reform and the reduction of wage costs.
Beck is aware of his country’s problems (namely, high unemployment and a ballooning deficit) but thinks they are unavoidable: “People are concerned about the future and hesitant to spend. My own state’s savings rate is 10 percent, which is extremely high.” Also, he points to German reunification. “We’ve had to do what no other economy has had to do,” investing billions of euros each year in former East Germany. “No economy can simply digest this.” Beck recalls Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s decision at the time of reunification to issue a one-to-one conversion rate between West and East currencies, saying “[Kohl] did it for very good political reasons. . . . I’m not trying to criticize that in retrospect, but that is one of the main reasons we continue to struggle.”
One area that will most likely undergo a clear change, however, is relations toward the United States, where it is the Social Democrats who will be conceding ground to their governing partners. “What Schröder did [during the Iraq war] and how he played it–the politicization of the transatlantic relationship–none of that will be there,” says Gramckow. Adds Stelzenmüller, “I think what we are going to see is a Christian Democratic chancellor who will be a little more reserved toward Russia, which is all to the good, and a little more reserved toward France, which is also all to the good. For most people these will be invisible movements, but . . . it will be a very important moment.”
That moment can’t come soon enough. Last week, Schröder addressed a gathering of trade unionists in Hannover, saying, “I do not want to name any catastrophes where you can see what happens if organized state action is absent. I could name countries, but the position I still hold forbids it. But everyone knows I mean America.”
Angela Merkel may not be the sunniest politician in Germany. Her country’s economy will probably struggle for at least the next two years, and there’s no telling how long this Grand Coalition will survive. But considering this daughter of a Protestant minister, who speaks fluent English and has defended America in the past, is set to take over from Schröder, she deserves at the very least a warm White House welcome.
Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
