A DER SPIEGEL Editorial by Ullrich Fichtner
After 16 years in government and a disastrous election result, German conservatives have lost their way. It is time to stop pretending that they can be part of the next government and begin the process of renewal.
The five phases of grief as outlined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross are also applicable to the loss of power. After its performance in last Sunday’s election, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats find themselves in the first phase: denial. In their shock over winning a paltry (for them) 24.1 percent of the votes, the CDU’s candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet, joined other party leaders in trying to interpret the outcome as a mandate to form a new government. That will pass. Then comes stage two: anger.
This phase could be intense. The party has more to examine than just a couple of months of ineffectual campaigning and a weak candidate. Conservatives in Germany who still think that Armin Laschet alone is to blame for the election day shortcomings should reflect a bit on recent history. Before long, it will become clear just how many reasons there were for not voting for the CDU or for its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). There was Transportation Minister Anrdreas Scheuer’s amateurish attempt to introduce tolls on German highways. There was Health Minister Jens Spahn’s mask-buying disaster. There was Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner’s apparent lobbying for Nestlé. There was Economy Minister Peter Altmaier’s poor performance on digitalization. And then came Germany’s chaotic response to the fall of Kabul, on the watch of Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
After 16 years leading the German government, the CDU and CSU, collectively known as the Union, are drained from carrying so much responsibility. When leading a government, there is very little time to fill up the intellectual tanks. Day-to-day problems and duties leave no time for reflection. It isn’t uncommon for parties in power to lose their connection to the world and its developments – until they are ultimately no longer able to adequately interpret and think through new phenomena. And that inability robs them of the aptitude to shape developments. A periodic stint in the opposition can thus be extremely helpful for recalibrating and once again finding the pulse of the times. The CDU and the CSU have reached that point.
It is time, after more than a decade and a half in power, to take inventory, starting with a close, internal examination of the Merkel years. The chancellor may have done a fine job of serving the common welfare of the country, but she has inflicted lasting damage on her party. On the national level, the Union was essentially reduced to being Merkel’s supporting cast, and essentially ceased producing much in the way of new ideas. Nobody at the moment has a clue what the Union’s conception of a modern society in the 21st century might look like. Conservatives stopped working on a fundamental revamp of its platform when the coronavirus pandemic arrived and haven’t returned to the project since. The Union hasn’t done its homework in years.
The search for policy positions reveals a potpourri of everything that somehow sounds important. Europe. Climate. Education, of course. Cutting red tape. The program put forward by Laschet’s CDU is a cloud of verbiage. But the relationship between the numerous terms is completely unclear, nor is it discernible how the CDU prioritizes them and what steps they might take to turn them into reality. Merkel managed to fill that programmatic vacuum: She was a governing platform unto herself. Now that she is leaving, it is all falling apart.
The Union, which Merkel intentionally pulled to the left, does not seem to have added programmatic depth, rather it seems to be ideologically hollowed out. Their base is not larger, it has simply become harder to identify. It has lost its profile. The CDU is no longer performing what its real task should be: delivering a constantly evolving, coherent definition for what it means to be conservative in the 21st century and how that fits with today’s world, the individual search for happiness and the challenges facing our planet, from the climate to the rise of China.
At the moment, not much seems to fit together in the Union. They lost support everywhere – quite a lot in some regions. It could be that a different candidate would have produced slightly better results. But that would have concealed the deeper causes for the election result even further.
Simply analyzing the effect of its campaign posters won’t be enough. The CDU – even more than the regionally anchored CSU – must now closely study the societal changes that have made life difficult for conservative parties across Europe. There are no simple answers. The populist encroachment on the right-wing fringe cannot be stopped with offhand dictums. And the fight for the center requires better proposals than the post-Merkel CDU has thus far presented.
It will be a rocky path. And it must begin with the acceptance of defeat. Indeed, according to Kübler-Ross, acceptance is another stage of grief. The CDU and CSU must admit that they need to take a break from holding power. Anything else would be a denial of reality.
Der Spiegel