A terrible natural disaster revealed the largest engineering mistake in United States history.
Not only did New Orleans’ levees flood after hurricane Katrina hit on August 29th, 2005,
but the government wasn’t prepared to triage injured or evacuate survivors.
“I want to get some perspective here, because earlier”
“That is perspective!
That’s all the perspective you need!”
“Hang on” “With the convoys there was food, there
was medicine, there was water...is anybody saying that we’re gonna get that was going
in there today to the people that you’re talking about?”
“No idea.”
“Again I want to thank you all- and Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.
FEMA director’s working 24-” With the US taking measure of its leadership,
across the Atlantic 20 million German viewers were tuned in to the TV debate between their
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democratic Party, SPD, and his challenger
from the Christian Democratic Union, CDU, Angela Merkel (2).
After Chancellor Schroeder made his opening remarks, a moderator tossed to his opponent.
She stumbled through the opening.
She was a force inside her party, but not among the public.
The 2005 campaign wasn’t going well.
In fact, after starting with a solid advantage over the unpopular incumbent chancellor Schroeder,
her party’s poll numbers were consistently dropping, while his were going up (1,194).
Everyone expected the charismatic Schroeder to dominate the debate, and seal the fate
of his opponent, the meek scientist from East Germany.
Though born in West Germany, East Germany is where Merkel grew up and where her political
career began.
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and as the two Germanys, East and West, were
making moves to reunify, Dr. Angela Merkel took a job as deputy spokesman for the East
German Prime Minister.
That same year, in the first unified German federal elections in December 1990, Merkel
was elected to the Bundestag, the German Parliament.
But even prior to her election, she was already being eyed by Chancellor Helmut Kohl for a
spot in his cabinet.
Merkel had only one demand: no women's issues, no 'family stuff’ (1,134).
But when Chancellor Kohl offered her a spot as Federal Minister for Women and Youth, she
immediately dropped the pretense.
Merkel would be the youngest ever cabinet minister, and she would feel it.
The media called her 'Kohl's girl’, 'Kohl's little girl’ (4;1,166).
Chancellor Kohl was using it too: 'Mein Mädchen’, 'my girl’ (3).
When she brought forward a bill on workplace sexual harassment, one member told her: “You
know, girl, if I didn’t find you so nice I wouldn’t vote for any of this rubbish,”
(6,28).
After helping to pass a bill regarding abortion, a newspaper captioned a photo of her with
Kohl on the floor of the Bundestag: ‘gut gemacht Angela’, ‘nicely done, Angela’
(6,29).
Kohl was the chancellor that led Germany through its reunification- a leader that had bought
Germany through a time of crisis.
She still had to overcome and to make her way.
As she told a journalist from Der Spiegel, “I have to be tougher, or it just won’t
work,” (7).
Perhaps Merkel had flashbacks to the early 90’s during the 2005 debate with Schroeder.
When she talked, Schroeder, who became Chancellor after Kohl, laughed.
He rolled his eyes.
He even gave an indignant look of fake panic when Merkel mentioned unemployment numbers
(5).
To him, she was the new girl on the block; her party had lost its 20 point lead in the
polls, and he-he was still chancellor.
But despite Schroeder’s dismissive attitude, Angela had acquired a considerable amount
of political experience between her time as Federal Minister for Women and Youth in 1991
and her campaign to be Chancellor in 2005.
Rather than underestimate her, it would have been wise to note she had taken a few political
scalps to get to that stage.
Her first cabinet promotion was in 1994 to be Minister for the Environment and Nuclear
Safety, during which she facilitated an agreement with wealthy industrial nations to commit
to reducing emissions.
“The conference president and German environment minister, Angela Merkel, outlines their mission:
to halt global warming.”
After Helmut Kohl and CDU lost the chancellorship in 1998, Merkel became general secretary of
the party (8).
Though a powerful position among the grassroots of the CDU, in terms of influence, Merkel
was still a couple spots behind Wolfgang Schäuble, party chairman and Kohl’s chosen successor,
and Edmund Stoiber, Minister President of Bavaria.
Merkel’s first move to consolidate power came in 1999, but started with events out
of her control.
It began when a lobbyist claimed he had bribed Kohl’s government to get approval for an
arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
It was further revealed that this ‘donation’ hadn’t been reported to the financial authorities,
thereby heavily implying that former Chancellor Kohl had facilitated the illegal contribution
(1,157).
Rather than remain loyal to Kohl, Merkel made a shocking play.
On December 22nd, 1999 she published an op-ed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung criticizing
her mentor.
Helmut Kohl, she said, had ‘harmed the party’.
The CDU needed to move on.
“...deciding how to begin the new era is less up to Helmut Kohl than to us”, “The
party must therefore learn to walk; it must dare to take up the struggle with political
adversaries even without its old warhorse,” (9).
With this move she wasn’t just elevating her own standing in the party at the expense
of Kohl, but at the expense of his chosen successor, Wolfgang Schäuble, who himself
became engulfed in the donations scandal, eventually forced to resign as party chair.
At the turn of the millenium, Merkel took over as the first woman head of her party.
But members of CDU now saw her for what she was: ambitious, a merkiavellian on a path
towards the German chancellorship.
Yet many surmised this woman still wasn’t fit to take on Gerhard Schroeder in a general
election- the pugilistic chancellor could only be vanquished by someone who shared his
likeness.
So Merkel’s next rival, Edmund Stoiber, conspired with a group of conservative governors
to stop her from running for chancellor in the 2002 election.
Faced with the prospect of losing the nomination fight and diminishing her authority, Merkel
deferred.
She told Stoiber she would support his candidacy but for a cost: in the event he didn’t become
chancellor, she wanted to not only continue as party chair, but take over as the head
of the parliamentary opposition in the Bundestag as well.
Merkel was in a corner, and really, it was the only play she had.
But as it turns out, Stoiber lost the election to Schroeder by the narrowest of margins.
So Merkel’s gamble actually paid off.
She was now not only the head of the party, she was also the leader of the opposition
in parliament.
With Stoiber, Schäuble, and Kohl sidelined, Merkel was now the center of gravity in the
CDU.
To take on Gerhard Schroeder was now only a matter of waiting.
Everyone who underestimated her was out of the way- with the exception of one.
Fast forward to 2005, and Chancellor Schroeder is relishing the fight with CDU nominee Angela
Merkel.
When she talked, Schroeder laughed.
He rolled his eyes.
He even gave an indignant look of fake panic when Merkel mentioned unemployment numbers.
And despite some media hand-wringing over Schroeder's behavior, on election night his
SPD and Angela’s CDU ended in a virtual dead heat.
The chancellor’s bombast seemed to have served him well, a bombast he continued, albeit
more frustrated, on television that night.
Even after losing, Schroeder acted like he won by a mile.
His disdain for Merkel was clear.
But she also had choice words for him:
Two weeks later, Schroeder was out- pushed by his own party so they could form a coalition
government with his rival Angela, a final humiliation.
Merkel became chancellor of Germany on November 22nd, 2005.
Kohl’s girl was now on track to be the most powerful person in Europe-a ‘political survivor’
(11).
She would immediately become the crisis chancellor the debate moderator asked about.
Her job would be to give the people of Germany the feeling that they would make it through
more than a decade of crises.
First, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the 2008 financial crisis arrived to banks
in Berlin, her government shored up domestic institutions, assured private savings, and
contributed to bailouts of EU member states with acute financial symptoms, though as part
of this she also became the face of cold fiscal austerity, a target for the resentment of
southern europeans beholden to western europeans to keep their governments afloat.
And crises continued to arrive- the 2009 recession, the Greek bailouts and austerity crisis, NSA
spying crisis, Russian seizure of Crimea, the refugee crisis of 2015, potential US withdrawal
from the NATO alliance- each contributed to Merkel’s image as the world’s most powerful
woman, some even called her leader of the free world.
Her domestic agenda drifted further into the background as she handled various crises on
the world stage- and yet, she continued to prevail in election after election after election.
Her personal popularity remained high as Germany coasted to record-low unemployment, a signal
of the largest period of domestic stability since unification in 1871.
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“I think what she did to Germany is a disgrace.
Is a disgrace.
It’s a total disgrace.”
“CNN projects: Donald Trump wins the presidency” “We can now say the decision taken in 1975
by this country to join the common market has been reversed by this referendum ”
“Let June 23rd go down in our history as our independence day”
“...earlier this month, Italian voters rejected a referendum to alter that nation’s constitution...the
vote was seen as the latest instance of a rising tide of populism,”
“The rise of Geert Wilders has left mainstream politicians reeling.
His message is simple: close the borders, ban the koran...”
“The breaking news is the far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, has won Brazil’s presidential
race.”
“What would happen under Merkel’s pressure?
One of her proteges Macron or Fillon, continue to accept several millions of migrants”
“wait til you see Germany...they’re having riots in the streets.
They’re having crime that they’ve never had before...no longer a fan.
I’ll tell you right now.
No longer a fan.” “...the success of the nationalist, far-right
Alternative for Germany.”
“The shock result was the AFD, which became the third-largest party as it polled 12.6%”
“The AfD: 13%” The AfD, which promised to fight an invasion
of foreigners, seems to have capitalized on the backlash over Mrs. Merkel’s decision
to open Germany’s border to over a million migrants in 2015”
It’s impossible to talk about the rise of Angela Merkel’s career without addressing
the last few years in global politics.
When Merkel announced in late 2018 that she would resign as leader of her party and not
seek further political offices, it was an expected development after years of walloping
in the polls, criticism over her migrant policies, infighting with her sister party in Bavaria
over the same, and the rebirth of the German far-right.
But what are we to make of these changes?
Merkel’s relinquishing of power wasn’t like Kohl or Schroeder overstaying their welcome
in the chancellor’s office, it was a large-scale rejection of the traditional volksparteien
that have dominated the German political system since the end of world war 2.
I reported on this channel at the end of 2017 about Merkel’s difficulty in forming a government
after elections, and asked this question: “Is this the crisis, or is this a delay
of the crisis?
Let’s say Angela Merkel gets her governing coalition.
It’s grants stability today, but that come at the price of creating the chaos of tomorrow?”
Now Merkel did indeed form the coalition, and even after her announced departure, there’s
no chaos, of course.
But one thing has become clear since then, the crisis is here, but it’s unlike any
of the crises with which Merkel had to deal in the rest of her chancellorship.
Merkel’s modus operandi is to wait it until the final moment, then take decisive action.
In the global recession, Crimea seizure, Greek bailouts, these were crises with deadlines-
Merkel would hesitate, then seize the middle ground and forge solutions just before the
bell.
Even early in her career- she less roundly defeated any of the men who stood in her political
ambitions, and more survived until they deflated themselves- she just sticks around.
And yet global populism seems to be the one issue which she hasn’t been able to outlast.
It’s impossible to know if she’d be facing the same political doom had she decided against
allowing migrants into Germany, but it’s extremely likely; she’d long been seen as
the face of the European establishment, and at this moment in European politics, there
isn’t a single mainstream western european politician with their head above water.
The continent is at a crossroads, and her party and her country are making turns towards
the political wings.
It is at this exact moment that the world needs a leader, as the debate moderator phrased
it in the first question to the future chancellor in 2005, who in times of crisis could give
people the impression that they can bring them through, that they can protect them.
And it is at this exact moment that Angela Merkel is leaving
the stage.