No ‘wild-eyed’ exuberance, but Merkel remains ‘quietly alluring’
Angela Merkel’s final campaign rally in Berlin was given in a circus tent and attended by no more than a couple of thousand of her supporters.
Having lived the pomp and circumstance of American elections for the last decade covering a German campaign is a bit like entering the Betty Ford Clinic of electoral politics. Intoxication verboten!
The supporters barely manage to bring their hands together in a clapping motion.
Needless to say Germany had its appetite for wild-eyed political exuberance beaten out of it a long time ago. And even when the German national anthem was sung at the end of the rally it was done with none of the gusto you hear during renditions of the star spangled banner.
In fact most of the people around me didn’t seem to know the words of their own national anthem.
‘Ordinary’
At the beginning of the rally I was prepared to be underwhelmed but Angela Merkel has a quietly alluring campaign style. There are the flashes of self-deprecating humour. Her laughter lines are remarkably pronounced.
Asked by an interviewer how she managed to look so put-together after 50 speeches in two weeks, she said: “Well, I am helping to boost the profit margins of the cosmetics industry.”
There are the occasional glimpses into her “ordinary” daily life. She does her own supermarket shopping. She likes to make potato for her husband, a quantum chemist. But unlike an American politician she doesn’t labour the points.
In fact because she is such a private person and talks about herself so little that the public laps up the little she gives them. Her best applause lines came when she scolded her opponents the Greens and the Social Democrats for wanting to interfere in the private lives of Germans by legislating “what we eat” for example.
It was a dig at the Greens who want to introduce a weekly veggie day.
Her small government vision is underpinned by a sense of social justice and solidarity which she inherited from her East German upbringing.
Millions remain unconvinced. They see her party, the CDU, as the party of the rich, who are more interested in lowering taxes than ensuring that the less fortunate get a crack at the German miracle.
‘Strong Europe’
On Europe Angela Merkel was almost thumping the podium. “We need to help Europe stay strong because that’s where most of our exports go to… China, India and Brazil are knocking on Europe’s door… we need to grow strong together as Europe.”
I could see the seeds of a European rhetoric that could appeal to the whole continent. Without naming them, she also called on countries that have received German money to do more to reform their own economies.
She also reminded the audience that in the late nineties it was Germany who was derided as the sick man of Europe.
She said she loved the protests against her in Greece or Spain, where the pastor’s daughter has been called a Nazi and where the German flag gets trampled on, because none of the protests get locked up and she grew up in a country where speaking your mind could land you in jail.
All this was delivered in a simple jargon free yet unpoetic German. It is the kind of language you might expect from a physicist.
It won’t win over the doubters but it reassures her supporters. Although this has been a very presidential campaign, in which she barely mentions her own party and her opponents, her approval rating has flatlined….but at an enviable 65 percent.
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