He goes as quietly as he came. But the mystery remains: Why did Olaf Scholz want to become a chancellor at all? What drove him? Loud puzzles that have not yet been decrypted – and one wonders whether Scholz himself has reasonably plausible answers.
Olaf Scholz owes neither his political skill nor his rhetoric or even his – as well as non -existent – charisma. The fact that the SPD and he narrowly won the Bundestag election in 2021 had to do with the Union inability. She made the mistake of making Armin Laschet a candidate for Chancellor after a week, although CSU boss Markus Söder was clearly ahead in surveys. But luck is also needed in politics.
So Scholz became a chancellor and soon showed that the job of holding him up for a sensitive structure like the traffic lights. His high degree of self -overestimation, which continues to this day, went hand in hand with a serious deficit that the Social Democrat revealed early on: to communicate the inability, to explain the situation and political projects to the people, and to show themselves reasonably how the population of Angela Merkel knew for 16 years. Scholz tried to copy the style of the ex -chancellor – to capture moods and to keep a speech from time to time. Instead of “mom”, he wanted to present himself as a “uncle Oiaf”, who lets everything run and only expresses when it is clear where the journey is going.
As is well known, that went wrong. Unlike the Christian Democrat, the SPD politician did not have the rhetorical means, not the charisma, not the empathy to drive this course. The fact that he still tried for years contributed significantly to the end of the traffic light coalition. Because Scholz had promised: “Anyone who ordered leadership will get them too.” Soon it was shown that those who order something from this Chancellor get nothing. The sentence from the 2021 election campaign is now a symbol of the dramatically deep gap between self -perception and external impact in professional policy. Scholz was perceived as weak. Hardly anyone knew what he was standing and where he wanted to steer the country.
A brief bright spot
The Social Democrat remained invisible in the first months of his reign, he was silent and silent. The country began to ponder: Who is Olaf Scholz? Why did the man want to become a chancellor at all? What drives him? Loud puzzles that have not yet been decrypted – and one wonders whether Scholz himself has reasonably plausible answers, except maybe: I wanted to rule the whole country. Even if you have to point out that the traffic lights with its three parties of different political ideas were difficult to manage, the loss and trust in the Chancellor were blatant right at the beginning of his term. He did not give a stop, but continued to falter the society, which was tumbling.
In his time turning speech, he showed what kind of strong head of government Scholz could have been, in which he provided Germany without ifs and buts to the side of Ukraine and showed military necessities of the future. Then a statesman finally appeared who had recognized the signs of the times. But followed by half -heartedness and tactics. The Chancellor made himself dependent on US President Joe Biden, emphasized European partners and always let Ukraine beg for weapons. The left, Pacifist wing of the SPD around the then parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich had a grip on Scholz.
-In the Taurus debate there was a characteristic of the Social Democrat, which is not well received at all in the middle of society: its unbearable arrogance. For months, he refrained from publicly explaining his no to taurus delivery to Ukraine. Scholz was as if he was the only one in the country with a perspective – a presumptuousness. Mützenich praised him at an SPD party conference, in Beijing from China “the promise” that “nuclear weapons must never be used in warlike arguments”. And further: “I’m sure that saved us a lot.” It sounded as if Scholz had already prevented a nuclear war. That liked to hear the SPD base, but was far from this world and its realities – a suggestion with consequences.
“A starker”
After the first projections of the European election in 2024, Scholz believed to be on another star. It was speechless that the boss of a coalition, who had just issued the Germans, found no words and that the “Spiegel” editor Marina Kormbaki spoke up to comment with a bold “Lower Austria”. Even a “afterwards” or “later” would have been enough. But Scholz, the eternal silent, did not notice two and a half years after the start of the traffic lights that his behavior was felt as condescending and ignorant and by no means as “prudent” how he and his environment always wanted to make it to the population. Scholz announced only the next day: “The election result was bad for all three government parties.” For this banal knowledge, the first man of the political work of power of the Federal Republic of Germany actually needed almost 24 hours.
The FDP politician Marie-Egnes Strack-Zimmermann chose the wrong words because she brought autistic people into abused. However, her finding about the Chancellor may have been very close to the truth: “After three years, I find that he has an autistic feature, both as far as his social contacts in politics and his inability to explain his actions to the citizens. This unteachability, the persistence in a bladder with a few whisperers, also led to Scholz started again as a candidate for chancellor, although Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had had what it takes to beat Friedrich Merz.
Sometimes Scholz publicly presented his shortcomings in the interpersonal coexistence. Just think of the irritating scene in the Bundestag when he was talking about the question of trust with the SPD parliamentary group leader Mützenich and Saskia Esken was added. Scholz looked at her briefly and then turned off without comment. The SPD chairwoman spread his hands helplessly, a gesture that meant: what was that?! A leading FDP politician once said: “Scholz apparently feels a real feeling of feeling that things be dismantled according to the motto: I just don’t care about it.”
Nice talk to the end
As puzzling as his acting was as a chancellor, his behavior in the election campaign was suddenly combative, humorous and rousing and did not even shy away from populism when he pretended that the billions of support for the support of Ukraine alone were at the expense of socially weak in Germany. Just believed that he believed it was almost nothing. In one of the TV duels before the election, Scholz answered the question of what he found to be “lying or lied to”: “Both are bad. You shouldn’t lie at all.” That said someone who, as a witness, called for a cum-ex scandal on memory gaps in investigation committees that the connoisseurs of the matter can hardly consider possible.
Scholz ‘exaggerated self -confidence showed grotesque features. Although the German economy suffers difficult times in its era, which also had to do with the politics of the traffic lights, Scholz claimed shortly before the election and in view of the disastrous SPD survey results: “I think it works above all and exclusively with a chancellor Scholz.” At the latest Kirchentag, the Chancellor celebrated the future for the course. Because: “None of it is reversed.” So you can talk yourself beautiful. The truth looks like this: Scholz is leaving as the worst chancellor that the country has experienced so far.
