Let German Voters Try Again A new election with new ideas is needed to fix the Merkel crisis.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/let-german-voters-try-again-1530573865
The main lesson from the troubles in Angela Merkel’s German government is that administrations need to be about something other than survival. By our deadline Monday evening it appeared she had survived the latest challenge to her chancellorship. But she’ll limp through the remaining three years of her term if she can’t fill the ideas void at the center of her government.
Mrs. Merkel stared down a rebellion from the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Horst Seehofer, Mrs. Merkel’s Interior Minister and CSU leader, had threatened to resign (or force Mrs. Merkel to fire him) if she didn’t emerge from last week’s European summit with a plan to stem the entry of asylum-seekers into Germany.
She did, and despite Monday’s theatrics Mrs. Merkel’s deal with Mr. Seehofer mostly builds on that EU pact. She promised the CSU stricter enforcement along the Germany-Austria border to bar asylum-seekers whose claims are being processed elsewhere in the EU from entering Germany, in line with the EU plan.
Maybe that will give Mr. Seehofer the political boost he wants from stirring up this feud. Bavaria, in Germany’s south, was traversed by a large share of the Middle Eastern migrants who entered after Mrs. Merkel’s open-door offer of refuge in 2015. The CSU now faces an electoral threat from the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which could deprive Mr. Seehofer’s party of its absolute majority in the state parliament in local elections in October. But the CSU’s slipping poll numbers suggest Mr. Seehofer’s stunt may have backfired.
The larger and longer-term problem is that Mrs. Merkel remains politically weak after last year’s inconclusive election, and this probably won’t be the last domestic crisis she faces. She didn’t so much win that election as lose it less than Germany’s other major parties did. Her diminished CDU/CSU seat count in parliament, and its unwieldy coalition with the center-left Social Democratic party, make her vulnerable to political shenanigans from all corners.
Political leaders and commentators have convinced themselves that Mrs. Merkel is indispensable for German stability or European cooperation or something. Voters disagree. Otherwise they’d have re-elected her with a bigger margin, especially considering her enduring personal popularity.
Mrs. Merkel should have gone back to voters again after the last inconclusive result, and she’d be wise to keep the option on the table when the next crisis inevitably arises. A new vote would give Mrs. Merkel a chance to run on a more compelling program than she did last year or to bow out for a new party leader.
The alternative is for Mrs. Merkel to lurch from crisis to crisis, her authority weakened by each one, while enacting policies that voters didn’t endorse. It’s hard to see the virtue in that. Any short-term stability will come at immense cost as infighting paralyzes Mrs. Merkel’s center-right. Frustrated voters might turn to the AfD.
Germany’s current political crisis began when Mrs. Merkel failed to give enough voters enough reason to vote for her. It won’t end until she or someone else does.
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