The German Elections: Business as Usual

Posters are everywhere--in front of my building there's one my teenager and I longed to rip down from the "Basis" party--the anti-maskers who think their civil rights are being trampled upon. They'd love Marjorie Taylor Greene. We restrained ourselves.

Germany has seven main political parties--there are creepy racist fringe ones like the AfD, the so-called "alternative" for Germany, the one that doesn't like migrants or non-cisgender persons or basically anyone of a non-Aryan appearance, and there's "Die Partei," the joke party that wasn't such a joke when one of its leaders decided to vote randomly yes to one vote and no to the next, alternatively, and ended up giving a yes vote to an AfD proposal. Then there are versions of Right, Center-Right, Left, and Center-Left. It's all very complicated. A mirror of the German mind.

I admire Annalena Baerbock, the Green party candidate, for her efforts to protect the climate, but I can see that Olaf Scholz, whom I initially dismissed as a Peter Principle type, will win. He knows his audience. He never says a word unless it's absolutely necessary to do so, and he avoids controversy with a deftness bordering on the acrobatic. Then there's his campaign slogan: "Kompetenz für Deutschland." He's offering Germans their very favorite thing: competence. To be fair, you can translate "Kompetenz" as "expertise," but what's the diff? To keep order, to follow the rules, is to be competent, in fact, an expert! I can just see him placing his competent head on the pillow, holding hands with his wife, smiling a "yes," when she asks if he had a competent day, and then, as he turns out the competent light, reaches competently for her and offers a competent act, God is in his German Competence, and all's right with the world. Meanwhile, fossils fuels are burning. Does he secretly know he can competently halt climate crisis even better than the feisty Madame Baerbock? I wish I knew. I have to admit, the man's eyes reveal the wheels turning behind them. He can't always suppress a slight rise of an eyebrow. I withdraw the Peter Principle theory and hope he has some genuine expertise with which to tackle the climate emergency and the migrant crisis. I hope he's Herr Very, Very Shrewdly Gets Things Done, not just Herr Competent.