In this year's German elections, the Greens are playing with the big boys.
It's been quite a campaign for the party. They spent months as number two in the polls,
giving quite a scare to the traditional leading parties on the center right and center left.
That seemed to justify the bold step they took this time around - to put forward a Green
candidate for chancellor, something they'd never done before.
That candidate is Annalena Baerbock. The rules had to be changed to make room for her in
the TV debates - until now there’d only ever been two candidates.
Omens of success were there for those who looked for them. For a while it seemed possible
that Baerbock could succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor.
"Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for our party and, if we do well, for our
country. We can clearly imagine the German chancellorship."
Such an idea shows how far the Greens have come. Some still think they still bear traces
of their radical, anti-establishment early days.
For others, the Greens are the "Verbotspartei" - the party of bans. A party that wants to
stop everyone eating meat and driving combustion engine cars. Bourgeois and urban - and out
of touch with real life. But the party has left behind its anti-establishment
radicalism. And it's trying to reframe its nagging woke reputation.
And although it all feels new - and the idea of a Green chancellor is fresh, the Greens
have been here, or near here, before... Those radicals didn't look like a party of
government. But their demand for fundamental changes in German society and politics found
an audience. Reinhard Bütikofer has been a Green party
member since the early 1980s. He became party leader in the early 2000s, and is now a member
of the European Parliament. "We were an opposition party, we called ourselves
an anti-party party. We wanted to be completely different. We wanted to bring a completely
different new agenda to the national conversation. We were shrill and we were loud."
It wasn't just their *political* clothing that stood out in the traditional setting...
When Joschka Fischer became the first Green to be sworn in as a state minister, he wore
sneakers to the ceremony. A symbol of a new generation, a new movement taking its place
in the political arena. The states have been a success story for the
Greens. They’ve gradually built up their voter base and are now part of the government
in 11 of Germany’s 16 states. And they didn't stop at state governments
- for a party that's just 4 decades old the Greens have a lot of experience under their
belts. They've consistently had MPs in the federal parliament.
They’ve been there since 1983, when they first took seats in the then West German Bundestag.
And 15 years later, they joined the federal government for the first time - as junior
coalition partners to the Social Democrats. Joschka Fischer swapped his sneakers for some
more formal shoes, and stepped into the prestigious role of foreign minister.
Their time in government made the Greens seem more like a serious political party. There
were some victories - the part-Green government introduced a policy to phase out nuclear power.
But they also had to manage the realities of being in charge - including difficult decisions.
Perhaps the one that stirred up the most conflict within the party was one that challenged the
deeply held pacifism of many Greens. Germany decided - with Fischer as foreign minister
- to support NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war.
Jürgen Trittin was the Green environment minister at the time. He was next to Fischer
at the tumultuous meeting when the party voted on the Kosovo decision.
"This was the lesson, I think, for a lot of Greens also. It's complicated to govern. There
are backlashes. But you can succeed even in such a complicated situation, like when you
go to a war that you seriously, all of us, including Joschka, didn't want. But we failed
to avoid it." Being anti-war was a founding principle of
the party. Many members left, feeling their morals had been compromised.
"I think that was the moment when the majority of the Green Party decided that we would go
down the reformist trajectory. We used to have two wings of the party, the so-called
realo wing, which was more or less the pragmatist wing and the so-called fundamentalist wing.
That's when most of the leading fundamentalists decided they were no longer going to support
this project." In the right place at the right time
The Greens served in two governments - they proved they could do it. And in the meantime
it seemed like society was catching up with their environmental thinking.
The overarching crisis is climate change. It's really happening - and is starting to
hit at home. Only this summer, floods devastated communities
in central Europe, with hundreds of people killed in western Germany. And fires raged
in the Mediterranean after weeks of scorching temperatures.
And while the Greens used to seem eccentric for worrying about the environment - now everyone's
doing it. People are demanding that even mainstream
products are more climate friendly. And industry is responding - it's easy to drive an electric
car, to sign up for wind- and solar-generated electricity - and even to eat a meat-free
burger, should you want to. This mainstreaming of green ideas and the
advance of the climate crisis, means that established parties campaign on such issues
too. The Greens' prime policy now belongs to everyone. But some suggest this doesn't
have to mean political disaster. "Now that all the other parties are active
in this field and are making proposals, the Greens have the chance to show that they have
always been active in this area, that they have always put forward proposals and that
they were ahead of their time. And this is of course a very good way of distinguishing
themselves from their political competitors." While society at large has moved towards the
Greens, the Greens have also taken steps to win over the average voter.
"There is sort of a pull and push mechanism going on between German society and the German
Green Party. And one could say that today the party is almost like a catchall party."
They've deliberately moved towards the political center. For example, they now embrace business
as an ally in the fight against climate change. And they relaxed their position on genetic
engineering in research. This process of softening, and moving to the
center, has been driven by the party's current leadership. And they've managed to take the
party with them. The Greens elected Robert Habeck along with
Annalena Baerbock as joint party leaders in January 2018.
They are Greens: next generation. Habeck was in high school when Fischer became state minister
in those sneakers. And Baerbock was in kindergarden - she was born the same year the party was
founded - in 1980. They are focused and politically hungry.
We have spent 40 years preparing for this, with all our rough edges, and now the moment
has come to renew our country. And anything is possible."
But many, particularly young people, say they haven’t been bold enough in mapping out
those possibilities. Fridays for Future activists have attacked the Greens for not being strong
enough on climate protection. "I think it's OK, it's necessary. Without
a social movement like Fridays for future, we won't bring anything through legislation
because we won't get a huge majority for that. On the other side, without Greens in government,
these movements won't bring through anything. So this is a form of work-share and part of
the work-share is that they criticize, we have to live with that."
It is a difficult position to be in. They need broad support to get enough votes to
gain office where they can do things. But they risk contradicting their entire founding
principles if they move too far to the center. The Greens posed a significant challenge to
the two main parties on a national level. A remarkable feat for a young party.
But their impressive surge at the start of the campaign seemed to ebb as election day
came closer. By early September, a Green Chancellor to replace Merkel seemed unlikely. This may
have to do with the party’s lack of experience. Remember, they've never put up a chancellor
candidate before, always aiming to be part of the government, not the lead coalition
partner. And their chancellor candidate - Annalena
Baerbock - is also inexperienced. She has been an MP in Germany's federal parliament
for eight years. But she's never had any governing responsibility at federal or state level.
And that made her vulnerable to attack. Not only that - allegations that Baerbock
had embellished her CV, and plagiarized parts of her book hit the party in the polls. Most
importantly, it made people question how competent the party was, that this could even happen.
"One would have expected the Greens to prepare and manage their campaign more professionally.
So the mistakes that we have seen in the campaign, especially the discussion about Annalena Baerbock’s
CV, in my opinion - and many political advisers have also commented on this - would actually
be considered part of the basics of the election campaign. These are actually must-haves in
the preparation of an election campaign." These mistakes disappointed many who found
the idea of a young Green chancellor an exciting one. They'll likely cost the party votes on
September 26. Ultimately how Baerbock and the party do on
election day will depend on whether they can convince enough voters that the sneakers and
the nagging have really gone, and they're competent to govern.