Scholz, Merkel, Schröder: what the chancellors have in common

Msometimes chancellors open their instrument cases in front of everyone and explain what’s in there. Olaf Scholz did that recently during the summer press conference. He spoke about his government’s climate policy, but one can assume that the principle he formulated is of general validity for his work as chancellor. It reads: Every measure taken by the government should be designed in such a way that it would get a majority in a referendum.

Since the founding of the Federal Republic, how many laws would have received a majority of the population if they had been allowed to vote directly on them? And does Scholz believe that the previous measures taken by his traffic light government met this criterion?

But this sentence by Scholz is also very revealing. Because he basically formulates the method and intention Scholz is pursuing with his policy. Like a stencil that can be laid over individual pieces of policy, making the contours clearer.

Scholz took a close look

Not only Scholz has an instrument box. Chancellors before him sooner or later also put the cutlery they use in politics on the table. The comparison with Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder is particularly interesting. Merkel was Scholz’s predecessor in office, he was her finance minister. You can probably not overestimate how much Scholz learned from her, how intensively he studied being chancellor up close.

Merkel and Scholz are in different parties, but are similar in their calm, analytical manner. Merkel formulated her political motto accordingly modestly: as a policy of small steps. Of driving on sight, and still a problem to think from the end.

Like Scholz, Schröder was a Social Democratic chancellor. Scholz also experienced him up close, he was secretary general under party chairman Schröder for a while. And yet they are very different types of politicians. Schröder’s principles of politics and leadership are difficult to put into words. It wasn’t a theoretical concept, it was more physical: Schröder pursued politics as a martial art, he used brute political force to push through his ideas.

Every head of government is caught between change and preservation. German heads of government perhaps especially because the Germans are considered to be very forward-looking, but generally reject adventure and political experiments. The value of security, in various forms, determined long stretches of Merkel’s chancellorship, and also that of Scholz. Immediately after his election victory, Scholz issued the slogan that a social democratic decade was about to begin. Now he doesn’t say that anymore. What should sound like the security of long-term rule now sounds more like a threat to many citizens.

At first glance, Merkel and Scholz seem to share large parts of their respective political principles. But they started at different ends. Before her first chancellorship, Merkel had conducted an election campaign for change. However, she made the experience that the restructuring of the tax and social security system was not well received by the voters. Merkel drew her conclusions from this. From then on she sought consensus, and she conducted her election campaigns without any frightening announcements of change.