display
At the end of an eternally long presidency, twilight finally begins for the successors.
Anyone who always wanted to but never dared can now get out of their hiding places after years of ducking.
Nobody needs to fear a lame duck anymore.
The old political truth of optimal self-positioning, regardless of the current power relations, is now catching up with the Chancellor.
From all directions - including and especially from within our own ranks - there is now increasing criticism.
In social media, blogs and forums, Merkel bashing, high-pitched in terms of wording and pitch, is becoming generally accepted normal behavior.
Merkel and the pandemic
display
It is high time to straighten out any excessive positions.
Because the Chancellor is more right than ever with her fundamental approach of careful scanning.
Yes, the option of constant, flexible adaptation to new insights may even be the most appropriate strategy for disruptive times, such as those that shape the present and the future.
The fashionable term of disruption is intended to illustrate in a nutshell that the rules of the game and framework conditions change so abruptly and radically that previous experience and recipes for success lose their validity as far as possible.
There is no question that the Chancellor made mistakes
display
“Drive on sight” is Angela Merkel's basic principle - actually, it has always been.
By dispensing with a long-term “agenda policy from a single source”, the Chancellor has made good progress in Germany.
Of course, such an appreciation is currently more than a provocation for many who suffer existentially from the Corona policy.
Despite all the criticism of the management of the financial market crisis of the noughties, the Greek and euro crises at the beginning and the refugee crisis in the mid-2010s, one must always reckon with where a fundamentally different policy would have led.
Without any question, the Chancellor made serious mistakes and many decisions could have been made completely differently.
display
But all in all, the constant willingness to correct previously pursued positions and to adapt to changed conditions has proven itself with a view to the development of prosperity and employment - even if radical, non-purposeful U-turns were called for without any parliamentary legitimation, such as with the Nuclear power policy after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The fact is: When it comes to corona policy, everyone is poking around in the fog of uncertainty - with the emergence of new mutations more than ever.
Nobody can decipher the numerous completely indefinite facts.
Even with simple connections, science and research are just as much in the dark as everyone else - especially with more difficult causalities, i.e. cause-effect relationships.
This also applies - with all due respect - to simple predictions of when, how many people will be infected and how severely infected and what lockdown or relaxation would change.
The changes (including mutations in the virus), especially changes in behavior in the population, are too volatile - often in response to excessive expectations or threatened political measures.
Neither clever virologists, experienced epidemiologists, top medical personnel, economic experts or columnists have anything more than individual fragments to contribute to an understanding of the big picture.
A lot of things turn out to be opinion rather than knowledge in critical analysis.
To work out a long-term consistent, consistent, coherent, coherent agenda of political doing and not doing is almost impossible.
It is part of honesty not to want to solve new problems with old reflexes in disruptive times
Anyone who expects more than just driving on sight is simply underestimating the complexity of challenges and overestimating what demigods in white lab coats, experts adorned with academic titles, renowned members of research institutions or members of parliament can really achieve.
display
It is part of honesty not to want to solve new problems with old reflexes in disruptive times.
Far too much is far too unknown.
Anyone who wants to make big politics here simply fails to recognize that the pandemic and how to combat it is beyond everything that was previously valid.
The framework conditions were changed so quickly and significantly that previously applicable laws were completely overridden by emergency measures.
But with this previous wisdom loses its basis.
Here is a relevant example: If states incur debts in ways that were previously not thought possible and at the same time the central banks open all monetary policy gates, economic policy breaks new ground.
Correspondingly, previous findings lose their predictive ability.
The intellectual shipwreck of ancient wisdom is exemplified when, for well over a decade, the mantra-like mantra of inflation has been greeting every year and, despite clever theoretical arguments, the prices of goods remain stable in practice (and only assets from real estate to stocks or raw materials have increased in price - massive for it).
Apparently, a long and well-proven forecasting tool is degenerating into a useless, possibly even misleading, forecasting ideology.
When the laws of the past become ineffective, an uncertainty that cannot be calculated in too many dimensions dominates future changes.
The forecast error is multiplied, and the predictions about the probability of events lack any empirically secured reliability.
Politics is losing its anchoring as well as future orientation.
In times of great uncertainty, there is only what Nassim Nicholas Talebs called Black Swans, the “unknown unknown” that can neither be recognized at an early stage nor understood, foreseen or averted in advance.
Under such disruptive conditions with an uncertain outcome, “driving on sight” proves to be a sensible strategy.
Politicians have to rely on the ability to quickly adapt to completely new and completely different circumstances, which is demanded again and again.
display
There are no longer any big throws or long jumps that are always perfectly planned for eternity, but only a useful, quickly implementable and flexibly changeable policy of small steps.
A flexible policy of adjustment is now likely to be the most promising
Of course, the concept of no alternative is wrong in the strict sense.
Accordingly, he provokes strongly.
There are always several options.
But if “no alternative” is to be used to express that any other policy is worse in the sum of all advantages and disadvantages, then it comes very close to the matter.
Then it could turn out, especially for the uncertainty of the Corona times, that there is no alternative to “driving on sight”.
In disruptive circumstances, a flexible policy of constant adaptation to new circumstances is likely to prove more successful than any alternative that is now being propagated by those who criticize Angela Merkel in order to be able to inherit her.
Thomas Straubhaar is Professor of Economics, especially International Economic Relations, at the University of Hamburg