On Thursday night, Armin Laschet will not have hesitated for a second.

He could have made the mistake of his life if he hadn't gone straight to the disaster area.

That would not only run counter to his duties as a “young” Prime Minister - the 60-year-old CDU chairman has only been in office for four years.

He would also have failed as a candidate for chancellor.

That is not an office.

But the expectations are as high as if it were one.

Jasper von Altenbockum

Responsible editor for domestic politics.

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This is a trauma for the CDU. Your candidate for chancellor from 2002, the then CSU chairman Edmund Stoiber, let himself be taken out of hand in the “rubber boots” election campaign against Gerhard Schröder in view of the flood disaster along the Elbe in August of the election year. Actually, both of them protected their respective office - Stoiber was Prime Minister in Bavaria, which belonged to the disaster area - from the accusation of only going to the disaster area because of the pictures. The shrewd Schröder went off as a doer, Stoiber as a doused poodle. The Union lost the election in the last few meters.

In response to the flood disaster, Laschet said in Hagen: “That is not a question that you want to use to create images.” He was walking a tightrope that is not given to every politician, namely to make oneself visible in such a way that one exudes leadership, but not so visible that it looks like you just want to be seen.

It was not as easy for Olaf Scholz on Thursday as it was for the father of the country.

The SPD candidate for Chancellor joined Prime Minister Malu Dreyer in order - as Federal Minister of Finance - to visit the disaster area in the particularly affected Ahrweiler in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Scholz did it like Schröder, who at the time put the willingness to help of the federal government above everything: "I will do everything to ensure that the federal government also provides financial help."

It is even more difficult (or particularly easy?) For Annalena Baerbock. She broke off her short vacation - there is nothing more she can do at the moment, as she is without a government office. She can only hope that another green man from the second row will not react in the same tone as he did recently to Laschet: his policy is jointly responsible for natural disasters like the one in California. As a result, the Greens are in a similar situation to Laschet, although he is not in the Chancellery, to Stoiber to Schröder. Although the Bavarian addressed the relevant issues to cope with the disaster, but in a way that it was received as a Beckmesserei.

Laschet, who was only a hair's breadth in his party as candidate for chancellor, looked in the Corona catastrophe as if he wanted to grow into the rubber boots that Markus Söder had put in front of him. That has changed. For this catastrophe he could have found some that suit him.