When Leichtmatrosen rule the deck.

This needs to be fleshed out more, but I only have time at present for the occasional snide remark, but, hey, if I can’t be snide on the blog, when can I be snide? Isn’t that what political blogging is all about nowadays?

Anyway, we return today to the topic of German politics (attention there at the back).

Those with long, long memories may recall that way back in the late 90s when after 16 years of questionable government Helmut Kohl was finally given the boot by a bored and exhausted electorate the new Red-Green Coalition of Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer slightly took its time to learn the ropes of government.

But then again, the Greens had had no experience of governing much and the SPD had – apart from heading a few Länder – been out in the political wilderness for nearly two decades. Then there were all the systemic problems Kohl had conveniently swept under the carpet during his 16 years in power (well you know, there was that whole reunification thingy which legally should have meant a renegotiation of the German body politic, but, hey, why spoil a big party with constitutional issues and dire warnings of economic consequences. By the way, did you see how that birth rate just plummeted in East Germany after the Wall fell? I wonder what that was about. It can’t all have been the effect of West German beer.).

Tangent.

Anyway, Red-Green could have been forgiven for being a tad all over the place in its first year. Given the mess they inherited you could argue they actually did rather well: both the pacifist-leaning SPD and the Greens coped well with Kosovo, a start was made reforming the pension system, public health insurance was tackled as well as one could hope given the two parties’ basic philosophies, environmentalism and climate change were prioritised and simple stuff like allowing civil unions between homosexual partners or modernising the naturalisation laws were finally taken care of. In short, after 16 years of stodgy cabbagery Germany in the late 90s was just in time dragged into the 20th century.

Most important, even though Agenda 2010 proved the SPD’s own undoing it was a valiant attempt at dealing with Germany’s deep-rooted welfare and labour problems (obviously it was cocked up, but given the circumstances it was probably the best that could be hoped for and anyway we don’t live in a perfect world).

You see where this is heading?

Given that Angela Merkel has had four years of training on the job the sheer degree of incompetence on display first in the coalition agreement negotiations and now prior and just after the swearing in of her new government is astounding.

But at least this government has its priorities right. The one thing FDP and CDU could agree on from the word go was to extend the lifetimes of nuclear reactors.

And spend a bomb on tax cuts while using that money to reform the tax system might have been the wiser strategy.

And now we have run out of money to save the planet.

Oops.

Pretty, pretty tealeaves.

Some quick thoughts on the election results. I really should be doing my tax declaration, but I am looking for anything to do to put that off.

Gnadenschuss: after eleven years in government, it is no surprise the SPD loses so much. It doesn’t seem a case of voting the SPD out, but SPD voters not going to vote at all. And why should they? The only way for it to remain in power would be in the unhappy liasion with the CDU. Now it can sort itself out in opposition, find its social democratic soul again, and after 4 years of painful budget cuts and tax hikes under Schwarz-Gelb return in a Rot-Rot-Grüne coalition with the Left Party and the Greens.

Schwarz-Gelb: will be very lucky to last for longer than four years. Apart from the ballooning debt which will not leave it much room to manouvre Germany has not suddenly rediscovered its petit-bourgois self again. It remains at heart a social democratic country. As soon as the SPD can inspire its large contingent of abstaining core voters to bother showing up at the ballot box the social democratic equilibrium will be restored again. At present these voters are stuck between their own distaste for the Left Party and the lack of realistic coalition possibilities. Meanwhile, the CDU will function as a social brake on the more gung-ho liberalisers in the FDP. Contrary to current perceptions on the left, last night’s election results are not the harbringers of a Reaganite apocalypse.

Progressive: Anyone notice that Germany will now be reigned by a female chancellor and an openly gay vice-chancellor? And it’s not even an issue.

Greens: seem destined to lose this game of musical chairs, despite – or because of – winning most of the arguments re environmentalism, nuclear energy, climate change and the economy. If they are lucky – and Germany isn’t – the next government will reverse most of the environmental policies of the last decade, extend nuclear power station leases, ignore climate change, cut renewable energy subsidies und und und. Then they might hang on to their raison d’etre. If not, they will have to come up with a new one soon.

Flat-tax: please. Now. I really can’t be bothered with my tax declaration this year.

Diary of the dead

Via Lexington, the rise of the zombie (political) party:

We know what happens when movements or parties continue to stagger forward after running out of ideas: They become zombies. Zombie parties are a recurrent feature of electoral democracies. Unable to articulate any coherent or workable governing philosophy, they mindlessly jab at cultural hot buttons, mechanically repeat hardwired tropes (“cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes”), nurse tribal resentments, ostracize independent thinkers. Above all, they feel positively proud of their doggedness. You can’t talk them out of it. Think of the Republicans in the FDR years, the Democrats in the Reagan years, the British Labour Party in the Thatcher period, and the British Conservative Party in the Blair period. Think of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party for most of the past half-century, or France’s Socialists today. To get a new brain, zombie parties usually need to spend years out of power or wait until a new generation rises to leadership.

I’d add the German SPD to that list, a party so bereft of life and with such an otherworldly Kanzlerkandidat, it’s latest policy proposals after crashing in the European polls to a paltry 21% was to fine non-voters a cool €50,- (since quietly dropped) and a return to paleo-socialism (handily leaving the centre-left middleground to Angela Merkel’s CDU).  Its penchant for raising any odd company from the dead only underscores its voodoo credentials.

Currently reading

Unter Linken by Jan Fleischhauer, which is a book about the Spiegel author’s late conversion to conservativism. It’s labelled as a humorous insight into the do-gooding world of Germany’s leftie middle class and why the author eventually switched sides. It’s politics-lite for the blogging generation as far as I can tell, anecdotal and polemical, including a couple of breathless pages on left-wing thought (Rousseau and Marx are mentioned, the rest dismissed as derivative) and clearly pandering to an audience. The title and the subject clearly evoke Nick Cohen’s What’s Left – Fleischhauer in fact explicitly references it in the opening pages – from a couple of years back, but, controversial as that book was, Unter Linken is far more limited in ambition, shallow where Cohen was questioning and argumentative.  But I am only a quarter in, so it might change for the better.

I’ve borrowed the book from my good friend B. who we visited last week in Switzerland and who I, accidentally on purpose, through years of discussing the rigidity of the German social market economy, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq war and the limits of multiculturalism, managed to convert from a dogmatic social democrat to a fire-breathing paleo-conservative, although he swears he is intent on voting the liberals in the next election. Like Frankenstein before me, I’ve come to realise I’ve created a monster out of my control. B. happily notes how we’ve both travelled from opposite sides of the political spectrum only to reoccupy each other’s places. And I must say it is comfy and cuddly here on the left. This is what happens when good friends debate in good faith: your open to argument and willing to revise your positions. But it also means that we don’t stop arguing and most discussions start with But you used to say… It’s a loop eerily reminiscent of Nietzsche’s eternal return.