Remember to drop in to Medienkritik to follow election developments. (Their definition of democracy is typically provocative: "Introduced to Germany by the United States and Allied nations after unimaginable strife, destruction, chaos and loss.")
Even some people on the Left have washed their hands of Gerhard Schroeder. I've already linked to Martin Kettle's Guardian op-ed. Sarah Schaefer, of the Foreign Policy Centre, was just as blunt in the Telegraph:
[T]he truth - and one which many on the Centre-Left in Germany are embracing, however reluctantly - is that the Schröder years have been an era of abject disappointment...
Part of the problem is that the SPD, unlike the Labour Party, has never had to go through a painful process of internal reform. In Britain, losing a general election means powerlessness, then irrelevance and - possibly - extinction. In federal Germany, the political blow of losing an election is never so severe. Even in its 15 long years of national opposition, the SPD still held power in some of the key Länder, or states: it never really tasted life in the wilderness, and the desperation that comes with it...
Germany in 2005 is not like Britain in 1979. It is easy to bill Angela Merkel as Thatcher-on-the-Rhine - easy, but wrong. The last thing Germany needs after the traumas of reunification is a collective handbagging. She will face formidable difficulties in building a consensus for her proposed market reforms. But it seems that she is willing to try, and as the first prospective Chancellor to emerge from the old DDR, has a "back story" that has the potential to mark a new beginning in German political history....
As a German living abroad... I fear for the German national psyche - and it is this, above all else, that has persuaded me that some things matter more than tribal party loyalty. It has always amazed me that a country that has taken on and achieved so much through re-unification can be so down-beat. But it is....
What Germany needs is something as basic as a new start. Even New Labour's fiercest critics would be hard pushed to deny that Britain - a country that had grown grey and tired - was rejuvenated by the first Blair victory in 1997. Of course, Germans thought that their own new dawn had come in 1998 with the arrival of Schröder - only to realise that they were still sunk in twilight
Incidentally, I see that Typhoon Hitch hits Berlin next month. The title of his talk? Iraq: Right War at the Right Time. Fighting words...
UPDATE: The exit polls suggest the CDU fluffed it. Medienkritik reports:
It looks like Angela Merkel completely failed to energize her base. The SPD did a much better job of campaigning with a sympathetic media at its side...
More reports and predictions over at Der Spiegel's Live News Blog.
The BBC offers a guide to the various coalitions now being talked about.
Sympathetic media? Basically everyone in the media predicted a slam dunk for Merkel!
Posted by: JW | Sunday, September 18, 2005 at 10:32 PM