The Connecticut College German department marked the upcoming September 27 elections and its annual Oktoberfest celebrations with a cookout at the College House.
Conn’s own Professor David Patton, who lectures in Government and German Studies, is currently in Berlin as part of an international committee that helps to facilitate and ensure the fairness of the elections.
James Scales reports:
But were you aware of the German national election? No matter, the Germans are hardly aware themselves.
In response to low voter enthusiasm, German newspapers have offered one million euros to whoever correctly guesses the election results.
Unlike our own, the candidates are publicly funded and do not begin campaigning until the end of the summer. This guarantees the Germans their vacations.
The differences between our system and theirs are quite stark (to use a familiar German word). The German government is a somewhat uneasy collection of various parties, most of which read like alphabet soup: the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands) of Merkel fame is distantly similar to our own Republican party; her sister party, the CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern) is led by Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg (a testament to the compounded German language); the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) leans more to the left, though it’s certainly more centered than “The Left” (Die Linke), whose advertisements feature bricks being thrown through the windows of expensive houses with the promise “do [it] better with us”; the FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei) stands on the platform of pro-business.
The list is then rounded out with a number of smaller parties, who may be represented as long as they gain more than five percent of the vote (the Germans count the popular cote directly, without a college of electors): The Greens, the Pirate Party (pushing for internet freedom) and the ultra-nationalistic NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands), who were recently reprimanded for sending incendiary letters to “immigrant” politicians.
Despite such a hodgepodge of different voices, the campaign is rather boring. Following a recent debate (between president Merkel of the CDU and the current Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier of the SPD) a popular German newspaper rhymed Obama’s now-famous slogan: “Yes We Gähn!” (“gähn” is German for “yawn”). According to one of the moderators (there were four moderators for the two candidates), the debate, billed as a duel, was more of a duet. A member of the Green party described it as “a political air guitar championship” while the FDP’s leader describe deplored the debate as a “football game without the second team.”
Their criticism is in fact quite due. Both Merkel and Steinmeier are members of the “Grand Coalition,” a tentative alliance between the two parties born in 2005 when the position of the chancellorship was in jeopardy. With the continuation of their alliance looming, they spent the debate congratulating each other.
Without a two-party system in which the winner takes the Executive branch, the German parties are represented proportionally to their votes.
As such they tend to make alliances to strengthen their political clout. There are several possible alliances following the election, including another SDP/CDU partnership (although many have decried this as a “total waste of time and energy,” given the ideological rifts between the two), a “left” coalition of the SPD, the Left and the Greens, which, according to one German reporter, “could really go to town, since they would only, at most, disagree on the size of the sums spent on redistribution programs,” or perhaps an alliance of the CDU and the FDP, one which conservatives are hoping for.
With Merkel’s chance of continued chancellorship “almost certain,” a likely option is the “left” coalition allied against the “conservatives,” a government not dissimilar to our own. There are obstacles of course.
The Left party (the “pariah” of German politics) was culled from former East German communists and dissenting members of the SPD who claimed the SPD was not going “far enough.” There has been a long-standing rivalry between the two parties and they will need to overcome this to form a stable coalition, perhaps with the Greens acting as a hinge.
Whatever the results, there are a few ineluctabilities. Baffled by our own healthcare debate, the Germans will certainly continue their “welfare state.”
There is also a continuing debate about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it seems likely the Germans will push to withdraw their troops to appease a dissatisfied public. They will also certainly continue their longstanding green tradition, which includes the removal of all nuclear plants by 2011 (although Merkel has remarked that she is considering rescinding this promise).
Unlike America, Professor Forster noted, there are “fat” politicians in Germany. Shying from the “cult” of personality that surrounds our campaigns, the Germans tend to prefer their politicians serious and sober.
Many young students have begun to contest this view however, crowding Merkel’s speeches in “flash mobs,” shouting “yeahhh!” whenever she pauses. The protest, they claim, is about “having fun.” One blogger painted the mobs as a “subtle way of presenting the other members of the crowd with a big question mark.” There are, of course, downsides to this.
Another user wondered, “wouldn’t it be funny if the international audience got the wrong impression,” worrying that perhaps they would view it as some sort of “alarming German political euphoria.” Given their history, Professor Forster noted, “[the world likes] the Germans to be boring when it comes to politics.”
