FIRST PART
our translation from STERN Magazin no. 42/2007, p. 52 , Oct. 1o.
Our Heart So White, Unser Herz so weiss
The CDU ( Christian Democratic Union party) has lost its politico-economic competence, now the CDU holds out its hand for the extension of the unemployment pay. A never delivered speech by Merkel???s critic Friedrich Merz reveals the unrest among the Blacks.
Heckler???s Shout from Berlin by HANS-ULRICH JOERGES
Dear Friends, I???m happy to see all of you again after such a long time, although the occasion is extremely unpleasant. Our circle is small, very small, and we are meeting under practically secret circumstances; nowadays, however, meeting under different circumstances is practically no longer possible in our party without exposing the participants to a high risk for their political career. Volker Kauder and Norbert Roettgen have requested to be excused from attending. As you know all too well, both of them have decided to serve the Lady from the East, which requires total dedication. It makes me all the much happier, though, to see that Josef Schlarmann and Michael Fuchs, the last upright members of our middle class, have shown up. I had to promise these friends, however, to remain silent about their attendance. Everybody knows what will happen to them if word goes around. (Grumbling, reluctant applause.)
Dear Friends, we have gotten right to the subject. Our CDU has no more politico-economic heads. And it has lost its competence with respect to political order. That is a dramatic process, although is has not really been noticed yet by the public. The CDU has lost its programmatic heart. This heart???s former place is now white! (Lively applause.)
I have realized this earlier than others, and have drawn the necessary conclusions. I did not want to burn myself in an hopeless fight with the Lady. The friends who stayed have surrendered, or they were subjugated. Volker Kauder and Norbert Roettgen I have mentioned already. Mattthias Wissmann has fled to the automobile industry. Roland Koch plays the Lady???s game. And whatever Guenther Oettinger did not do to himself by delivering his unfortunate speech, the Lady finished up without hesitation. Nowadays, he is no longer a person of weight. (Babble, calls: We have abandoned him!)
These days, I am being urged to take a public stand against the removal of the politico-economic core of the CDU. Once more, some are advising me to establish a new party. However, I will not become the Oscar Lafontaine of my party, although any more, I am hardly able to recognize it as such. Furthermore, I do not want to spare the cowards the moment of disgrace, when they consent to the extension of the unemployment pay out of plain populism, arm in arm with Kurt Beck???s SPD which has turned to the left.
Calculating to A Fault
Angela Merkel once promised to rescue Germany from its torpor. But the country has had a change of heart about her reforms—and so has she.
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This summer, a remarkable survey raised eyebrows in political Berlin. The Al-Lensbach Institute, a respected arbiter of the country's mood, found that 45 percent of west Germans (and 57 percent of east Germans) consider socialism "a good idea." Only 25 percent of Germans disagreed. Despite the country's disastrous experience with 40 years of communism, socialism's "magic allure" has steadily increased over the past decade and a half, from 36 percent nationwide in 1991, says Allensbach political analyst Thomas Petersen. "The Zeitgeist," he says, "has definitely shifted left." The Germans' growing love for leftist ideals contrasts sharply with the incredible boom of Germany's (mostly) capitalist economy. Last week, new numbers showed that parts of German industry are growing at double-digit rates not seen since the go-go 1960s, thanks in part to some decidedly unsocialist economic reforms. Over the past year, an unprecedented one million Germans left the unemployment rolls, cutting the jobless rate from its all-time high of 12 percent in 2005 to less than 9 percent today. Some categories of workers who used to have little chance of ever landing a job—like workers over age 50—are now also finding employment. And once again, Germany appears to be turning into an engine of growth for Europe.
So what accounts for the strange lurch left? (On the following pages, four experts weigh in on that question.) It seems as soon as the economy perks up, the willingness to face tough economic realities is gone. Now, this mood threatens to stop—and even unravel—the very economic reforms that helped unleash the present boom. In response, both parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's unwieldy coalition government, the center-left Social Democrats and Merkel's own center-right Christian Democrats, seem to be falling over each other with proposals to roll back reforms, while she herself remains largely out of the fray. Whether it's more generous unemployment benefits, handouts for families, or new minimum wages—"every single policy being proposed in Berlin makes an economist's hair stand on end," says Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Bank of America in London. Depending on how much of it becomes law, Schmieding says Germany's economic situation may once again darken. In any case, the brief Berlin Spring of German economic reform is over.
The shift is even more dramatic considering where Merkel came from. Born and raised in East Germany, she experienced firsthand what it means to grow up in an inefficient and unfree socialist system. In 2005 she campaigned for the chancellorship on a platform of radical economic change, promising wide-ranging deregulation and tax reform. The first two years of her tenure have produced real steps forward. Her government has lowered and simplified Germany's byzantine corporate tax, raised the retirement age from 65 to 67, and begun devolving power to Germany's 16 states. Thanks to the economic rebound—and a massive tax hike—the government expects to have a virtually balanced budget this year, for the first time since 1989. While this doesn't compare to the reform milestones under her predecessor, Gerhard Schr?der, her balance is still solidly positive, Schmieding says.
Now she seems curiously aloof as she watches her coalition associates pick apart her agenda. The Social Democrats, whose rank and file have never forgiven Schr?der for his cutbacks to their cherished welfare state, are hemorrhaging members and voters to a radical party called simply Die Linke—"The Left." Its chairman, Oskar Lafontaine, is a xenophobic populist, prone to declaring sympathy for Hugo Ch?vez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The demagoguery seems to work: Die Linke now polls 11 percent, while the Social Democrats are down to 25; most of the rest of the left-wing vote goes to the Greens, at 10 percent. But a more startling indicator of the country's shifting climate is the broad support for Die Linke's policies. Two thirds of all Germans—including large swathes of Merkel's ostensibly conservative voters—agree with all or some of the party's platform, including reinstating the old retirement age, extending unemployment benefits, and pulling all German soldiers out of Afghanistan.
Indeed, it's astounding, and almost surreal, how deep the consensus against reforms has become—just at the moment when they are bearing fruit. Seventy-two percent of Germans say their government is doing too little to advance "social justice," the highest value for German voters. Eighty percent want welfare handouts raised and the retirement age lowered. Even among Merkel's conservatives, 71 percent say that companies like Deutsche Telekom or the energy utilities should be owned and run by the state. "Germans have changed their mind and want the state to regulate the economy again," says Manfred G?llner, president of the Forsa polling institute.
J?rg Lau, commentator for the weekly Die Zeit, thinks such sentiments aren't nearly as radical as they seem. They express, he says, a deeply conservative nostalgia for the security of the cradle-to-grave welfare state of the 1970s and '80s, before globalization and outsourcing began to spread insecurity deep into the middle classes. To Lau, the left-wing longings of a majority of Germans are really their retreat from what they perceive as a too-complex and hostile world. But whether radical or conservative, the trouble begins when such sentiment turns into policy. A proposed law to "protect" German companies against foreign hedge funds—fear of which the German media have done their best to fan—risks hollowing out shareholder rights, making it much harder to influence management. That would be a step backward toward the old days of "Deutschland AG," where lax governance insulated inefficient companies from meddlesome owners.
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