The German Election: Something Old, Nothing New.
The victory of the Christian Union in Germany yesterday was hardly a surprise. It had been expected for months, ever since Socialist Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party, which effectively dissolved the Coalition consisting of the Socialists, the Greens and the FDP. That coalition had always been on shaky ground from its inception. It took Scholz two months to piece it together in 2021, and this so-called Ample Coalition lost steam from its very beginning. No single party in Germany can win an absolute majority, so the leader of the party with the largest number of votes becomes chancellor and has to piece together a working government by inviting other parties to work with him. That means concessions have to be made with other parties, whose agendas might be radically different from the winning party, usually in the form of ministerial posts. And that means that the various ministers usually work against the common good...