Americans are so wrapped up in the Republican presidential primaries that they most likely haven't noticed that Germany has a juicy presidential scandal of its own. Germany's president, Christian Wullf, has come under attack for lying aboug taking a private loan from disreputable sources while he was premier of Lower Saxony. Like most political scandals, its not so much the lies but the cover-up that's the issue here. Wulff made threats against Germany's powerful tabloid Bild-Zeitung , which up to that point had always been his biggest champion, in a stupid effort to suppress the story about his financial dealings.
Now, according to the New York TImes, there is a growing chorus demanding that Wulff resign and be replaced by Joachim Gauck, a favorite of the SPD and the Green Party:
“Mr. Wulff has long since been denigrated to a laughingstock,” Vera Lengsfeld, a member of Mrs. Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, wrote on her Web site. “Mr. Wulff’s credibility is now so damaged that he is only a caricature of that which he tried to be but apparently never was.”
Mrs. Lengsfeld called for Mr. Wulff to be replaced by Joachim Gauck, who ran against him in 2010. Mr. Gauck consistently trumped Mr. Wulff in public opinion polls at that time and was dubbed “the President of our Hearts” by the German news media.
But Gauck has some baggage of his own, which can only be a distraction if he becomes president: he is a champion of Thilo Sarrazin, who made millions of euros from his best-selling book that claims Muslims are genetically inferior to "Germans":
Der Sozialdemokrat Thilo Sarrazin wurde im Jahr 2010 von Gauck als mutig bezeichnet. Sarrazin habe “über ein Problem, das in der Gesellschaft besteht, offener gesprochen als die Politik”, sagte Gauck. Die politische Klasse könne aus dem Erfolg von Sarrazins Buch lernen, dass “ihre Sprache der politischen Korrektheit bei den Menschen das Gefühl weckt, dass die wirklichen Probleme verschleiert werden sollen”
(In 2010 Gauck characterized Thilo Sarrazin as "courageous". Sarrazin "spoke openly about a real social problem," Gauck said. The political class could learn something from Sarrazin's book, namely that "their language of political correctness raises suspiciouns that real problems are being obscured'.)
Also, Gauck was a signatory of the Prague Declaration which equates the crimes of Nazi fascism with Soviet communism. The declaration has been criticized by many for relativizing - or minimizing - the horror of the Holocaust.
In general, however, I go along with Spiegel commentator Georg Diez, who recommends doing away with the largely ceremonial post of president altogether:
Ich würde zum Beispiel gern das Amt des Bundespräsidenten abschaffen, das ja eh nur eine Art Blinddarm der Politik ist: Wenn alles gut läuft, spürt man nichts, nur wenn er sich entzündet, merkt man, dass es ihn gibt.
(For example, I'd like to eliminate the office of the Federal President, since for a long time it's been a kind of "political appendix": when things are going well, you don't realize it's there. But when it gets infected you know you have one.)
The presidency is relic from the early years of the Federal Republic recovering from the trauma of the Third Reich. As an institution, it's usefulness has long since passed.
No other president has been a better symbol for the German state than our most authentic Herr Wulff. It is felt, that rejecting that is like rejecting the whole system. Who would go so far?
60% ?
70?
Posted by: Strahler 70 | January 08, 2012 at 10:46 PM