Olaf Scholz has been Chancellor for two years to the day this Friday and the situation is disastrous, and not just for the traffic light coalition. The Chancellor’s reputation is also declining. People are increasingly blaming the government’s crisis on its boss. He has to ask himself why he wants to continue.
On Friday, the SPD will meet for a federal party conference in Berlin and will once again congratulate itself on its government leadership. This is what happens when a party meets on the second anniversary of its coming to power. Especially when their victory in the 2021 federal election was long considered impossible and a repeat four years later seems highly unlikely. “It’s great, we’re in government! Maybe not as well as expected, but definitely better than any other party that could be considered,” is the expected message from the party leaders Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil, who are running for re-election. They will assure that the second half of the government will be significantly better and that the SPD will sharpen its profile, which is why the 2025 federal election is far from lost. On the one hand, that is correct. On the other hand, it is unclear whether the SPD and Chancellor Olaf Scholz will stay for another two years.
Scholz and his traffic light are threatened with an early end due to the budget crisis. Even if the coalition comes up with a budget for 2024 in the new year, it will have to make do with less money from now on. The internal centrifugal forces will not subside and the traffic lights will not be saved by passing a budget. Bitter for Scholz: Two years after he was sworn in, hardly anyone would mourn his chancellorship. For a long time, the strategists in the Willy Brandt House and in the Chancellery were able to reassure themselves that the Chancellor’s poll numbers were far better than those of the SPD. In other words: For the next federal election, as in 2021, people would think about who they wanted to have as head of government and then vote for their party.
The Chancellor’s bonus is gone
But Scholz’s personal approval ratings have not only been in free fall for months in the trend barometer that Forsa regularly collects for RTL and ntv. In a hypothetical direct election of the Chancellor, Scholz was most recently eight points behind CDU leader Friedrich Merz with 16 percent and two points behind his deputy Robert Habeck from the Greens. If only Scholz and Merz competed, Scholz would be four points ahead of Merz with 36 percent – but only because Green supporters firmly reject Merz.
Views of Scholz as a person are also disastrous: in May 2022, 61 percent of those surveyed considered him competent, today it is 30 percent. Of the 56 percent who thought he was trustworthy, 32 percent remain. The sympathy value fell from 57 to 41 percent. The few 32 percent who rated Scholz as a strong leader a year and a half ago have fallen to 10 percent. The chancellor bonus, a pillar of every re-election for her predecessor Angela Merkel, is gone. And that with a main opponent, Friedrich Merz, who enjoys neither the general public nor the supporters of the CDU and CSU.
Central promise unfulfilled
Two further factors call Scholz’s possible re-election into question. First, the war in Ukraine is likely to continue raging whenever the next Bundestag is elected. The tide is even threatening to turn in Russia’s favor. Scholz’s promise that Russia’s war should not have been worth it for Putin is considerably shaky. At least he can claim that there has not yet been a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. Secondly, the Federal Republic’s economic output, which has been shrinking this year, will probably only grow slightly next year. Meanwhile, the federal government lacks the antidotes. The budget, which is also stretched to the limit by all sorts of clientel politics, hardly offers any leeway and circumventing the debt brake has become almost impossible. There remains hope for a significant increase in demand from China to stimulate German exports. But Berlin has even less influence on this than on the course of the war in Ukraine.
Scholz’s personal low in the polls is more than just the result of a good year and a half of constant dispute in his traffic light coalition. These values are a symptom of a head of government who finds himself and his coalition in a dead end. And who doesn’t know how to cover up this strategic disaster with his personal appearance. However, only very few of his voters probably chose Scholz because of his charm or his inspiring speeches. Compared to the candidates for chancellor Annalena Baerbock and Armin Laschet, the Hamburg native, who was brittle in his demeanor, exuded the most solidity and was a promise of wisdom, experience and reliability.
This promise has remained unfulfilled because, after two years of Olaf Scholz, Germany is, on the one hand, facing immense problems, but on the other hand, it lacks the strength to solve them – politically, because the coalition does not fit together on fundamental issues, and financially, because it will hardly have any room for action in the future has investments. If only Scholz were the “plumber” in question, one would want to shout out to Friedrich Merz. After all, the SPD voters had expected an expert craftsman of power to hold the place together. But the need for repairs has only continued to grow, while the Chancellor has lost his most important tool: taking on debt. Ouch!
The fact that the Chancellor has not even apologized for having brought so much uncertainty to the country with the shadow budgets he designed is not irrelevant. So many things went wrong in the government, but Scholz did not reveal any mistakes or personal responsibility for any crisis situations.
Almost always behind the situation
After all, it must have become clear to Scholz and those around him last summer that things cannot continue as before. This is how a program was born that doesn’t necessarily cost a lot, but could bring a lot – the promise of a functioning state. Regardless of whether it is ailing infrastructure, lengthy administrative procedures, excessive administrative burdens on the economy or weak enforcement of residence rights: the idea behind the Germany Pact is as simple as it is good. Because of course people want to see that their tax money is spent sensibly and that laws apply to everyone – including when it comes to residence rights. It would be a recession program for the AfD.
A number of things have been addressed since then, and the packages of measures to reduce bureaucracy in particular are seen as promising. But the implementation takes a long time. Similar to the effect of the Hartz reforms, a result that is visible to everyone could still take years, which the traffic light may no longer have. At the same time, the budget crisis is affecting infrastructure projects, particularly on the railways. And when dealing with refugees, Scholz allowed himself to be driven into an announcement competition by Merz, which, on the one hand, raised completely unrealistic expectations of a decline in immigration numbers, and on the other hand, offended parts of his own party. At the party conference this weekend, the party’s junior members will vent their displeasure about the Federal Chancellor’s statements, which are perceived as hostile to asylum law.
In any case, the liberation that was hoped for in the summer did not succeed. Scholz has fallen behind the situation again. As with the dispute over the heating law, when he escalated the conflict between the Greens and the FDP for weeks. Or with the energy price brakes, when the coalition remained inactive throughout the summer of 2022, only to have a hastily formed commission cobble together something like a solution. Or the mandatory corona vaccination he advocated, which first divided the country and then failed miserably. And last but not least when it comes to aid to Ukraine: When Kiev was finally able to launch its spring offensive in the summer, the Russian occupiers had long since dug in and laid an unprecedented belt of mines across the country, while Ukraine still did not have enough weapons and ammunition.
Merging through is no longer enough
In these two years there was too little impetus from the Chancellery, and when it did, it too often went wrong. It may speak for Scholz’s character that he never dared to try to lead his complicated government coalition from the front for everyone to see. But because he also lacks a sense of symbolism in other ways, the image has emerged of a chancellor with weak leadership, of whom hardly anyone knows where he actually wants to go since he realized his childhood dream of being chancellor. In times of full coffers, it was enough to primarily manage the country. But after years of the Corona crisis, the war in Ukraine, fears of economic decline, real income losses and an uncertain future due to climate change and aging, the country may need a different approach from its head of government – someone who exudes hands-on confidence and his politics beyond the facts knows how to convey.
That may be asking a lot in these extremely complicated times. And there is no one in sight who could certainly meet these requirements. But this supposed lack of alternatives should not lull Scholz into self-confidence. Two more years of Olaf Scholz as Chancellor require a better justification. Too many people have already turned away from politics completely and are also foregoing information and exercising their right to vote. And too many other people have long since turned to the AfD’s eternal promises of salvation. It would be essential if the head of government clearly reflected the seriousness of the situation – in the country and in the coalition. These days, Olaf Scholz not only has to think about how he can save his term in office, but above all: why?