It is the surprise of the evening - how touched Olaf Scholz looks and how aggressive Armin Laschet can be.

The Federal Minister of Finance and SPD candidate for Chancellor should actually be satisfied with himself and the world: He is ahead in the polls, this applies to personal popularity ratings, but also to the Sunday question;

his party has long outstripped the Union.

For the CDU and CSU candidate for chancellor, the situation is exactly the opposite.

The Triell, laden with many expectations, which ARD and ZDF broadcast on Sunday at the best Tatort airtime, quickly develops into a classic duel, as Annalena Baerbock seems unwilling to ultimately fight for entry into the control center of power .

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

  • Follow I follow

Manfred Schäfers

Business correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

The CDU politician attacked the Social Democrats early on. He reaches for the sharp trident: raid in the Federal Ministry of Finance because of the failures in the central office for combating money laundering, losses for millions of savers because of Wirecard fraud not recognized by the financial supervisory authority, generous concession by the Hamburg financial administration for the Warburg Bank in the cum-ex scandal in his tenure in the Hanseatic city. Scholz argues that he has created many new jobs, a new boss and a new way of working in the money laundering unit. He also accuses his competitor of deliberately creating the wrong impression. The Osnabrück public prosecutor's office is not conducting any investigations against his ministry, but an authority in Cologne. Laschet holds against it: There have been searches in the Ministry of Finance.The Vice Chancellor is visibly annoyed, "so much that he gets red ears," as the German Press Agency attentively notes.

Scholz is usually a politician who has himself and his feelings under control.

He speaks factually, briefly, calmly - so quietly that you often don't understand what he's saying.

The rumor is circulating in Berlin that the microphone system in the cabinet room has been retrofitted especially for him, which his people dismiss as defamation.

Regardless of what is true, it usually doesn't help if you hear what he's saying, because the minister does everything possible to avoid concrete statements.

The gap between ought and being

Economics Minister Peter Altmaier is the opposite of Scholz in pretty much everything. Nevertheless, Scholz succeeded in wrestling the roaring CDU politician at the joint appearances on the Corona aid: The SPD man unpacked the all-powerful weapon called Bazooka and promised the big boom. So Scholz always got the headlines - Altmaier later got into trouble when the bureaucratic support, which was based on a concept by the finance minister, could only be paid out with a long delay. The SPD politician set his sights on the Chancellery at an early stage and cleverly used the opportunities his office offered.

In the pandemic, he said goodbye to the "black zero", apparently without regret, his predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) had enforced the budget balance in the plan and surplus in the end. There is now plenty of money for almost everything that the federal government does not have. Usually, a finance minister tries to take a course where he does not run the risk of losing control. But there are laws of their own in the election campaign: The money is looser than ever. With the draft budget for 2022, the federal government will receive a total of 470 billion euros in new loans during its term of office. In just three years, the federal government will increase its debt burden by half.

Scholz does not challenge that. He even advertises with the statement that solid state finances are particularly important to him. The gap between ought and being could hardly be greater. But that doesn't bother the voters either, if the polls are to be believed. The lawyer manages to present himself as a designer who overcomes all the hurdles that petty doubters put in his way. He usually doesn't say how this is supposed to work. He prefers to remain general. Then he says sentences like: The task is very, very important. The solution is anything but trivial. But he has a plan. However, he does not reveal what this looks like. It couldn't open. One example was the deleveraging of the municipalities. The federal states are actually responsible for this. But Scholz didn't care.But in the end the resistance was too great, both among the coalition partners and among the countries. The project petered out.