Person of the week: Robert Habeck
The truth behind Habeck’s crash
By Wolfram Weimer
08/30/2022 10:37 am
Robert Habeck was the last star of the ailing traffic light government, many already saw him as the coming chancellor. But in the energy crisis he makes serious mistakes – from the gas surcharge to the nuclear phase-out. Suddenly the sympathizer is attacked hard from all sides – something tricky becomes apparent.
In the popularity ranking of politicians, Robert Habeck had climbed every clear peak – Germany’s most popular politician, heart’s candidate for chancellor, credibility king. In the flickering light of the dim traffic light, all the other ministers sank into semidarkness. Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil and Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser, Minister of Defense Christine Lambrecht and Minister of the Environment Steffi Lemke, Minister of Education Bettina Stark-Watzinger and Minister of Transport Volker Wissing – all backstage, only Habeck was in the spotlight. In addition to the pop star of politics, even the chancellor looked like a cable carrier of power.
The severity with which Habeck was beaten can be explained on the one hand by the drama of the situation. On the other hand, the Icarus effect catches up with the high flyer.
(Photo: dpa)
Habeck’s great acceptance success was that he developed a new, very own form of political communication that bewitched, almost hypnotized the audience: psychopolitics. Habeck has a tremendous gift for turning political conflict into gentle therapist talk and posing as a sort of Sigmund Freud of the Berlin Republic. Inwardly battered political minds sensed liberation from all sorts of complexes and constraints. In short, he was the government’s new superego.
The hardest attacks come from the SPD
But now the great therapist slips off his soft couch with a loud bang and hits the ground of reality hard. Russia’s war of aggression has plunged Germany into a dramatic energy crisis. Not only are electricity, gas and oil prices exploding, the security of supply for the entire industrial location is at stake. Inflation is out of control and a looming recession is threatening millions of German jobs. And forever. Because without gas and with the highest energy prices in the world, central value chains of the industrial production network are likely to tear and eventually migrate abroad. In short: Germany’s competitive position is historically at stake.
Nice words don’t help anymore. Suddenly emergency surgeons are in demand instead of therapists.
In this discipline, Habeck makes big mistakes. He revised the coal phase-out much too late and allowed more coal-fired power plants to be used again. When it comes to the necessary use of domestic gas and German nuclear power plants, he even refuses completely. He remains ideologically trapped, strays around with oblique appeals to save money and blocks the emergency use of his own resources. Fracking, hydroelectric power and nuclear energy are demonized – out of fear of the green basis – instead of using them at least temporarily. And so Germany continues to generate electricity from imported gas, which can only be bought at horrendous prices. Habeck puts everything on the import gas card and gambled it away. For him, the controversial gas levy becomes a beacon of his failed energy policy.
Suddenly, criticism from all sides rained down on the former star. Surprisingly, the hardest blows come from their own coalition partners. SPD leader Lars Klingbeil not only publicly snubs “technical mistakes,” but portrays Habeck as a airbag and a chatterbox: “In the end, it’s not just nice words that count in politics, the substance has to be right.” SPD faction deputy Dirk Wiese etches: “The Habeck principle works like this: appearances ready for film, technical implementation questionable and in the end the citizen pays for it.” The FDP portrays Habeck as a smooth talker and ideologue, even drives him with relish, demands the release of fracking and the continued use of nuclear power plants and even gives him ultimatums to revise his gas levy. Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder considers Habeck to be “overwhelmed” and that he “does not do well in the political craft”. Union parliamentary secretary Thorsten Frei from the CDU accuses Habeck of “ignorance and naivety” as well as “technical bungling”. From SPD leader Saskia Esken to the Green Anton Hofreiter, everyone is currently publicly blaspheming about Habeck’s mistakes.
Who is the new centre-left People’s Party?
The image of Habeck also suddenly darkened in the media. The “Handelsblatt” sees him falling “from poster boy to goof boy”, from the editorial network Germany to “Capital” the word Habeck “disenchantment” is taken for a walk, the “Frankfurter Rundschau” even imagines the “Habeck twilight”, the “Spiegel” asks: “What now, Chief Silvertongue?” and reports to the Minister of Economic Affairs in a column double standards. Habeck relies on the climate-damaging tanker transports with fracking gas from the USA, but domestically the method is still taboo, “although with its help, German gas requirements could be covered for the next quarter century”.
The unusual severity with which Habeck is now being beaten can be explained on the one hand by the drama of the situation and the seriousness of his mistakes. On the other hand, the attacks also suggest that some competitors and commentators would now like to see the hero fall. An Icarus effect catches up with the highflyer. For some Habeck bashers, satisfaction plays a role in finally looking behind the facade of the feuilletons and discovering little substance. Sheer jealousy breaks out among political colleagues, and some even seek cheap revenge. In the media business, there is also the old adage that one likes to go up the career elevator with heroes, but it’s even better to go down.
A line of scrimmage, however, should hit Habeck strategically. The SPD has obviously decided to attack Habeck head-on and strategically weaken him. The hardest attacks come from the social democrats, because Habeck is seen there as a threat to the existence of their own people’s party. Habeck’s success elevates the Greens beyond the SPD, re-election of Olaf Scholz would be almost impossible given Habeck’s enduring popularity ratings. With a view to the state elections in Lower Saxony, which are so important for the SPD, the SPD is worried that the Greens will weaken it so much that the CDU could eventually become a stronger force in the state again. In short: It’s about the question of whether the SPD or the Greens is the future center-left people’s party. This is one of the reasons why Habeck was shot at with large caliber SPD barrels. In contrast, Friedrich Merz’s criticism seems almost paternally mild.
And so the Habeck disenchantment furor is also about the power structure between red and green in Germany. If Habeck wants to save himself and his party chancellorship, he must convincingly overcome this crisis – the first he has ever experienced as Federal Minister of Economics. He will quickly have to answer the question of whether he can only speak beautifully and therapeutically, or also govern powerfully and solve the energy crisis.