From The International Herald Tribune: For Merkel, little time for Europe BY ALISON SMALE RECKLINGHAUSEN, GERMANY — Angela Merkel showed up right on time outside the sun-splashed old town hall here. The 59-year-old chancellor worked the crowd of some 5,000, gave three or four waves from the stage, then settled in for local small talk and — despite hecklers — a 30-minute stump speech. While no soaring orator, she mixes folksy expressions with statistics and worldly observations and assures listeners that their affairs, at home and farther afield, were safe in her hands. ‘‘Successful together,’’ proclaimed the posters of her center-right Christian Democratic Union. ‘‘Germany is strong, and should remain so,’’ said another. ‘‘Stay cool and vote for the Chancellor!’’ urged T-shirts, emblazoned, like the outsize campaign poster at Berlin’s main railway station, with her trademark diamond-shape hand gesture. While Europe and the world scour Germany’s dull election campaign for clues about what the most powerful leader on the troubled Continent intends for its future, Ms. Merkel is concerned with winning a third four-year term, which would make her the only leader re-elected twice since the financial crisis engulfed the world in 2008. All politics being local, the rest of Europe gets about five minutes in her stump speech, which stays closer to home. There are sly digs at the Greens for trying to proscribe a ‘‘Veggie Day’’ once a week in public cafeterias, barely a mention by name of her Social Democratic rival, Peer Steinbrück, and an awkward dance around a populist demand from Bavaria’s leading conservative to levy fees from foreigners using German autobahns. As election day next Sunday nears, Ms. Merkel is warning her supporters against complacency, invoking a ‘‘rude awakening’’ when the votes are counted and do not suffice, despite her personal popularity, to build a desirable coalition in Germany’s complex parliamentary system. Mr. Steinbrück, a skilled finance minister in Ms. Merkel’s first government from 2005 to 2009, has unexpectedly slipped up repeatedly after declaring his candidacy last fall. But he has done better since their only television debate on Sept. 1, and indeed became the talk of the country on Friday after a photograph on a newspaper magazine cover showed him giving his middle finger to a taunting interviewer. Opinion was split on whether the 66-year-old veteran Social Democrat was being teasing and bold, or simply not behaving like someone seeking to become the leader of 82 million Germans and Europe’s strongest economy. Ms. Merkel — ever cautious, ever concerned to keep all options open, ever, to her critics, more imperious — would never be caught in such a pose. She is more like everyone’s patient aunt, alternately stern or smiling, always able to wait until quarrelsome charges — be they rival politicians at home or European leaders haggling in Brussels — finally calm down and agree how to proceed. When she does talk of Europe, her overwhelming concern is that it stay competitive (and Germany thus strong). ‘‘Sparpolitik,’’ or austerity, has virtually vanished from her public speeches. Referring on the stump to helping weaker European partners, she speaks of ‘‘solidarity’’ and ‘‘taking responsibility for oneself’’ as what she calls ‘‘two sides of the same coin.’’ Even when her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, briefly caused a campaign stir in August by letting drop that Greece would need another, third rescue package sometime in the next two years, she refused to get more specific — or indeed to say whether Mr. Schäuble had cleared his mini-bombshell with her first. The euro gets praise as the foundation of Germany’s prosperity, while united Europe has provided almost 70 years of peace — and, she tells her rallies, ‘‘the older ones here know what that means.’’ When she glimpses anti-Merkel protesters on her visits to Southern Europe, she tells her fans, ‘‘I know they won’t be locked up’’ for speaking out against austerity that Greeks, Portuguese or Spaniards see as imposed by Berlin. ‘‘Freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, all that is Europe,’’ Ms. Merkel intoned in Düsseldorf last weekend as she fired up 7,000 supporters for the final days of campaigning. ‘‘When you look around the world, you know what we have.’’ Ms. Merkel’s invocation of freedom may reflect human rights priorities engrained by life under communism. She saw that system collapse under its own mediocrity — an experience she will not repeat by doling out hard-earned German money to shore up ill-structured European unity, or missing the opportunity outside Europe, where, an adviser notes, 90 percent of global growth is occurring. ‘‘That,’’ he said, insisting on not being identified, ‘‘is the main task.’’ John C. Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, a country where he has spent almost four decades, sees in Ms. Merkel’s attitude to Europe a chancellor who ‘‘knows more or less how far she can go with the German public’’ in terms of more European unity. She ‘‘obviously has more sophisticated thoughts than she expresses’’ and yet ‘‘no internal commitment’’ to the European Union. ‘‘Her basic goals are national,’’ he said. It is Germany’s paradox that its European neighbors and its American friends are simultaneously wary of both its dominance and its reluctance to lead. As the fourth-largest economy in the world, famous for strong midsize companies that out-engineer competitors, Germany must look out for fresh trade. Yet that swiftly nurtures fear that Germans, seeing European markets shrink, will stake out richer ground in the United States, Latin America and Asia. For her part, Ms. Merkel is clearly fascinated by foreign travel — from East Germany, she could only explore the Soviet bloc and hope to go West as a 60-year-old retiree. She nurtures export opportunities; phalanxes of business figures have accompanied her on six trips to China, where she always lingers long enough to explore a different province outside Beijing. (By contrast, the French media noted last spring that President François Hollande’s first visit to China consisted of a perfunctory 36 hours in the capital.) Ms. Merkel is also a keen observer — her eyes scan every room and interlocutor — and she soaks up knowledge that peppers her speeches: South Korea spends 4 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development, while E.U. countries lag behind their goal of 3 percent; Indonesia skillfully paid down its debt; China might soon view Germany only as the birthplace of Beethoven. ‘‘The world is not sleeping,’’ Ms. Merkel warns, while illustrating Germany’s shrinking place in it: If you take 100 people and divide them up in terms of world population, she notes, ‘‘only a bit more than one would be a German.’’ In delivering these home truths, she frequently fluffs her lines. Germans, generally conservative folk inured by their 20th-century history to rhetorical flash, find this sympathetic, noted Christoph Schwennicke, editor of the monthly magazine Cicero, who in a July 2012 cover story compared Ms. Merkel to a mother hen who would be sitting in her nest for some time. In contrast to the weekly Der Spiegel, whose current cover depicts Angela the Great as an echo of that other self-willed German, Catherine the Great of Russia, he cited six reasons: Ms. Merkel does not overestimate herself, reads people and situations well, cares for power but not its trappings, inspires loyalty in good people, tries not to give away her intentions and is very quick. She is also presiding over a country that, since the World Cup here in 2006, has felt more assertive. Young Germans in particular are unafraid to fly or wave their national flag. Anyone 26 or under has known Ms. Merkel as chancellor only since the age of 18, and could vote, and her party has clearly counted on this appeal. ‘‘She has really done a lot,’’ said Dennis Duermann, 25, at the Düsseldorf rally. Mr. Duermann, who is half-Canadian and has traveled and lived in New York, sees Germany, with its welfare system and greater social equality, as the best home — and credits Ms. Merkel. ‘‘She doesn’t try to make big speeches,’’ he said. ‘‘She just gets on with it.’’ ◼ Get the best global news and analysis direct to your device – download the IHT apps for free today! For iPad: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404757420?mt=8 For iPhone: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404764212?mt=8
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 22:34:08 +0000
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