2024-09-03 08:52:28
Friedrich Merz met with the Chancellor. It has always been a meeting like love between porcupines. This time the rapprochement almost worked. But only almost.
This time, Friedrich Merz really tried to be conciliatory. And to come across as supportive and constructive. He and the Chancellor, the two most important political figures in the country, as he said, government and opposition, had breakfast in the Chancellery to discuss the situation in the country in light of migration and its sometimes horrific consequences, such as the one in Solingen. Because everyone was so friendly and approachable, Friedrich Merz even took off his tie, which Scholz wasn’t even wearing. He liked to tell the anecdote afterwards: Both of them were very relaxed with their collars open, the Chancellor and his foreseeable challenger. The difficult problems in front of them on the table, which they should perhaps tackle together for once.
And then this sentence, which at the end of the day the entire press conference of the opposition leader boils down to: “The country is slipping away from the Chancellor.”
Let’s assume in his favor: Friedrich Merz didn’t want that at all. He really wanted a kind of informal government of unity with the man he has always had such a hard time with. Or both of them together. He wanted to overcome these difficulties and finally achieve something together with the Chancellor. Overlook party politics. For the good of the country.
But if he really wanted to, then Friedrich Merz has once again managed to tear down what he had carefully built up at the front. It remains to be seen whether, despite the horror of the events in Solingen and Mannheim, one can really speak of a “national emergency”. But it is clear that quick and effective solutions can probably only be achieved through a close collaboration between the government and the largest opposition party. But who wants to join in this close collaboration when the bread crumbs in the Chancellor’s office have barely been swept up and the incumbent reads that his breakfast partner, who was just conciliatory and willing to cooperate, is saying on TV that the country is slipping away from him.
In his press conference, Merz quite rightly conceded that his party colleague Angela Merkel had something to do with this specific state of the country. You can twist that further.
If anyone has caused this country to lose control when it comes to migration, then that person is Angela Merkel. And Scholz then inherited the country that had lost control politically (and was unable to get it under control, that’s true). But he did not say: something went wrong under the leadership of our party leader at the time, i.e. under the leadership of the CDU. Instead, he blamed the person he may not have addressed as “you” to on this issue, but who he had tried to build trust and closeness to.
That won’t work. And it doesn’t show the kind of sovereignty and firmness that one would expect from someone who wants to become chancellor. There are many things that one can accuse and criticize the incumbent. But something like that would never happen to Olaf Scholz. He tends to say one or four words too few. And Merz sometimes says three or four too many.