Elections are about numbers, so the most important ones right at the beginning: Last Sunday, Armin Laschet needed seventy seconds in the second triall against Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz for his final address.
In it he varied the word “trust” five times.
Only two words came up more often, namely "I" and "You".
He said “around” and “it” less often, namely three times each.
So a whole wave of trust.
On the one hand, there is a good reason that Laschet is now trying to ride her to the Chancellery.
He is the only one among the three Triellanten who can be sure that he will not enter into a coalition with the left.
The other two hang around there.
It is important that Laschet exposes this, because the left party's shop window pacifism is a danger for Europe.
So it was only logical that Laschet had already prepared the leitmotif of trust at the end of August, in the closing words of the first trial, with the catchwords “reliability”, “stability” and “steadfastness” (two mentions each).
The fact that he could refer to Adenauer, Kohl and Merkel gave his appearance an aura of historical depth.
However, this strategy has one disadvantage: If Laschet creates a high wave of “trust”, others may be able to swim better on it than himself. His lurching line as prime minister in the pandemic, his laugh in the flood disaster of June namely, not leaving the impression of marble reliability on everyone in Germany.
In any case, the demoscopes present findings according to which Laschet cannot keep up with Scholz and Baerbock in terms of trustworthiness.
From Porsches and Polos
The Union candidate is promoting qualities that the public does not trust him, but the competition.
It's as if the railways were advertising punctuality and the dating app Tinder with everlasting love.
Or, in other words: if you want to sell a Porsche, you shouldn't advertise with bargain prices, otherwise people would rather buy a Polo.
Another problem arises.
A candidate who emphasizes reliability and stability appeals to people's fear of change.
If he doses this drug incorrectly, however, he will appear anxious himself, and that will go down badly.
Election professionals know that people demand not only trustworthiness from candidates for chancellor, but also a promise of energy.
That is even more true today than it used to be.
If you believe the opinion polls, an issue that has become more and more important for voters in recent years has become more and more dynamic: climate change.
Some see him as the Germans' greatest concern.
However, this challenge demands other qualities from a Federal Chancellor than just a sense of stability.
First and foremost, it requires that he recognize and address the concerns of the time.
Laschet did not do this in the closing words of the first triell.
Not a syllable of climate.
In the second closing remarks he touched on the subject, but only with a single word - when he promised to strive for “a climate-neutral industrialized country”.
Immediately afterwards he assured that the promised land would of course be “economically strong, socially and secure”.
The fear in the neck
Such tranquilizers don't always have to be the wrong medicine. Even the Greens do not want to scare people and therefore promise on their posters “Economy and climate without a crisis”. But with them the context is different. You are not suspected of not wanting to change anything. On the contrary. They have enough to do with dispelling the impression that under their government every single family home in Germany would come under the wrecking ball. It is not the smell of anxiety that troubles them, but the suspicion of being too rigorous.
Laschet, on the other hand, speaks like someone who has the AfD's climate change deniers on his neck.
Like someone who sees in the polls how one East German constituency after another turns blue, and who therefore believes that he must constantly apologize for the fact that he may actually want to do what is necessary.
That doesn't sound like someone here has really taken to heart what the revered and feared conservative Margaret Thatcher once put into the words that democracy is “not about running after, but about going ahead”.
Adenauer, Kohl and Merkel recognized this, each in the crises of their time.