Is Merkel fighting a losing battle?
After 12 years and the unsolved refugee crisis that made the German public crazy, Merkel fatigue is setting in
The year is still new, but in German politics, an end seems already at hand: Chancellor Angela Merkel, who failed to form a new coalition government after the federal elections last September, sees herself confronted with a public that is fast losing patience with her political leadership.
In a recent poll, half of German voters said they wanted her to resign and allow another member of her center-right Christian Democratic Party to negotiate the formation of a governing coalition. Grumblings are heard within the party too, which did relatively poorly in the elections. Recently, members of the Junge Union, the party’s youth organization, directly called for her to step aside.
Merkel may be one of the world’s most admired leaders and an inspiration for a new generation of women politicians, but at home her appeal has been more pragmatic: Her political capital derives from her ability to react to crises rather than on her conceptualizing and shaping of the country’s political agenda. To be blunt, she’s not much of a vision person. For a time, that worked. But over Merkel’s three terms as chancellor, she led so-called grand coalitions with the center-left Social Democrats twice. Such a coalition should be able to use its supermajority to enact major reforms, to get big projects done. And yet very little has come of it. To the contrary: After 12 years and the unsolved refugee crisis that made the German public crazy, Merkel fatigue is setting in.
Meanwhile, the country yearns for a comprehensive approach to migration, a strategy for digitalisation, educational reform and a long list of infrastructure upgrades. Instead, moving from one crisis to another, the biggest economy in the European Union has lost track of the path of modernisation. And now, it seems, she can’t even form a government. The Social Democrats have rejected another grand coalition, though Merkel continues to press them. And talks with two smaller parties, the ecologically focused Greens and the pro-civil liberties Liberals, fell apart late last year.
The most controversial part of the various coalition negotiations has been refugees: not so much the premise of accepting them, but the awkward and inconsistent manner they were handled once they arrived. Her poll numbers dropped overnight; while they have improved since, many in her party still blame her for leaving the door open to a right-wing backlash in the form of the farright Alternative for Germany party, which siphoned votes away from the Christian Democrats in last year’s election.
Many also blame her stance on immigration, and her failure to promote concrete agendas, for the failure of three-party negotiations in the fall. The Christian Democrats, Greens and Liberals couldn’t single out a project that should shape their tenure. The Liberals left the table in late November after several tiring weeks. Politicians of the Green Party admitted that they also considered bailing on the talks over the chancellor’s attitude. The Social Democrats have reluctantly started negotiations in January; more than a few conservatives wonder if they would perk up if a fresh face replaced Merkel’s on the other side of the table. The Social Democrats, after all, are in the same place, with a growing number trying to push out Martin Schulz, the head of the party and its candidate for chancellor in 2017. Under him, the once-grand party, once Germany’s largest, delivered its poorest performance in history. Merkel’s only other option is to rule as a minority government, which would mean building coalitions on the fly, behind every new piece of legislation, always worrying about an insurrection. It’s unlikely that Merkel could succeed in such an environment, or that she’d even want to try. Should none of these options pan out, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will be forced to call new elections, something no one wants with the current slate of leaders — at best, the results will be the same. This is why pundits are calling for a fresh start at the top of Germany’s major parties.
In both parties, there are younger, rising politicians who are eager to enter the big stage: For the Christian Democrats, there’s 37-year-old Jens Spahn; Germans looking south to Austria, which just elected the 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz as chancellor, might be willing to get behind a new young leader. Already, in the Christian Democrats’ Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, its chairman Horst Seehofer is stepping down as state premier in favor of the much younger Markus Söder.
Spahn in particular might be ready for the top spot, given his ability to tack between cosmopolitanism — he’s openly gay, and recently married his longtime partner — and public angst over the dissolution of German identity: He recently complained that he couldn’t order a coffee in Berlin without speaking English. With Merkel still floundering in the mess she created over immigration, it may be that Spahn — or someone like him — needs to take the reins.