Merkel's achievement is far greater than it seems. She is a soft-spoken, even-tempered and, frankly, dull pragmatist who has compared her economic program to that of a "Swabian housewife." Her campaigns are the most boring anyone can remember. Despite the decisiveness of her recent victory, she humbly declared that she "respected those who did not vote for me." To underline that point, she celebrated her new term as chancellor with a lunch of potato soup and sausages, an event that the Financial Times called "so low-key it resembled an atonement rite more than a celebration." She is, if you like, the anti-Obama: zero charisma, zero glamour, beige pantsuits and a spouse who rarely appears in public.
And yet, partly by default and partly by design, Merkel is now the de facto leader of Europe. Over in Britain, Gordon Brown's Labor Party is immolating itself. Over in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy's attention-deficit issues propel him from one project to the next, to the irritation of everybody. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is under endless investigation, and everyone else is too small or too preoccupied to compete. Even when the European Union chooses its next president later this year, he (and it almost certainly will be a he) will find it extremely difficult to do anything that contradicts the wishes of Merkel, who regularly tops lists of the world's most powerful women.
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In fact, the more I watch her, the more I am convinced that her femaleness holds the key to her success. Under her watch, Germany has continued to grow more powerful, more influential, more dominant than ever before. Yet not only has no one noticed, they applaud and ask for more. If a bull-necked Helmut Kohl or a flashy Gerhard Schroeder were running Germany, there would be rising anxiety and mumbling about the Fourth Reich — just as there was 20 years ago, at the time of German reunification, when Kohl was still in charge. But Merkel provokes no jealousy or competitiveness among the alpha males who run large countries, and she inspires no fear among the citizens of smaller ones.
On the contrary, Germany even has good relations with most of its neighbors to the east, many of which are inclined to distrust Germans as a matter of principle. This is partly because she is so willing to show up when asked, and offer mild-mannered words of friendship and apologies for World War II. After which she returns home and works to make Germany stronger and more dominant in the region. And everyone smiles. . . .
Until now, Merkel's various failings have often been attributed to the fact that she was in a "grand coalition," one of those only-in-Europe dysfunctional parliamentary governments, the result of a coalition between the Socialist left and the Christian Democrat right — an arrangement somewhat as though the White House were shared evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Every tiny issue had to be negotiated between the two major parties, every step in foreign or domestic policy elaborately discussed. But now her coalition partner is another center-right party, the Free Democrats, and she has no more excuses. Perhaps that is why she has suddenly started talking about cutting taxes, which in Germany counts as genuinely radical.
Instead of looking for “charismatic” candidates, let’s look for dull and effective ones!
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