Jens Spahn has had a long dry spell.

In between, it looked like things were going all wrong.

As if he had to give up his hopes of one day becoming Federal Chancellor for a long time or even for good.

That was in the summer, when the Union was still doing so well in the polls for the federal election that FDP chairman Christian Lindner, who has a good relationship with Spahn, said it had been agreed that Armin Laschet would succeed Angela Merkel.

Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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It just seemed to matter whether it was enough for a black-green government or whether the FDP still had to be brought on board. That would have been Spahn's dreams of being Chancellor. But then came September 26th, the day of the federal election, when the Union did worse than ever before and ended up behind the SPD. Since then everything has been open again. Since then, Spahn has been able to dream of the Chancellery again. However, even if the dream progressed well, he would face the next dry spell.

Jens Spahn has two advantages for someone who is aiming high in politics at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century.

Apparently he has known where to go since his youth.

In the biography written about him three years ago, Michael Bröcker wrote on the first page that his classmates had promised him the life plan of becoming Chancellor.

In many conversations with the author, Spahn himself had no doubts about this career aspiration, according to one page.

To this day there is no reason to believe that anything has changed.

Born in 1980

Spahn's second advantage is his year of birth: 1980. The next youngest among the rivals in the struggle for power in the CDU was born in 1965, that is Norbert Röttgen. Friedrich Merz was born ten years earlier, in 1955. Armin Laschet has also reached sixty. Spahn is therefore the only one who can demand unrestricted rejuvenation in the party with regard to himself, Röttgen can limit it.

As for Laschet, it will soon become clear whether he will stand in the way of Spahn's ambitions for a long time. If that were so, if he would still become Chancellor because he succeeded in drawing the Greens into a Jamaica alliance, even though they were negotiating a coalition with the SPD, or because the traffic light talks failed, he would be the greatest rock in Spahn's way. Not all CDU chancellors stay in office for a decade and a half, but three out of five did. But Jens Spahn no longer seems to assume that Laschet will become chancellor after all that is heard. Rather, there is some evidence that he sees the probability of his party going into the opposition at 90 percent rather than 80 percent.

In the Bundestag faction, whose chairman would be the opposition leader in the event of non-government, Spahn has to do with Röttgen, but also with the incumbent Ralph Brinkhaus.

As usual, a new parliamentary group leader should have been elected for one year two days after the general election.

Röttgen had wanted to compete against Brinkhaus.

Brinkhaus would have had nothing against a candidate for a fight.

Spahn was determined to start the race if Röttgen didn't retire.

Merz had not considered a candidacy, only turned against a quick decision.