German Politics: Wilful Misunderstanding

I've come to suspect that the American media purposefully gets German politics wrong.

I was in the U.S. when Merkel was finally appointed Chancellor, and the constant tagline on the story was "free-market reformers" triumph in Germany. Obviously it's a simpler story when the media can portray Angie as the new Maggie Thatcher and the Conservatives as free-market cowboys, while the Socialists supposedly cling desperately to the social models of the past. Who wants to get lost in the messy details of German politics? I'm sure American reporters were aggravated when it came out that a future SPD Minister wants to privatize the nation's highways, while the Conservatives oppose it! I can certainly sympathize with any reporter who figures he should just leave that story alone.

But I think the mischaracterization of German politics goes beyond any urge to simplify. The American media has been heralding the failure of European social democracy now for two decades. There has long been this unseemly glee over the "FACT" that coddled European workers with their long vacations, generous social benefits, and incredible job protection will soon have to face harsh realities. "Schadenfreude" may be a German word, but hardworking neo-puritan American commentators have taken the phenomenon to new heights.

If Merkel really were an American style free-market reformer, then this would mean that Europe's wealthiest nation had finally rejected the "European social model." Americans could be reassured that democratic socialism will be swept into the dustbin of history, along with all the other sentimental European fantasies of economic equality, security, and solidarity. Once European social democracy is truly dead, then liberal Americans in particular can purge their last remnants of guilt about poverty and inequality. We can stop feeling bad at not having done enough, at having secretly applauded Bill Clinton's welfare reform and the rightwing turn of the Democratic Party. Even New Orleans won't seem so bad, because we'll know that there's really no alternative, that cowboy capitalism is the only economic model left on the globe with a claim to viability and legitimacy. (Come back, Francis Fukuyama, all is forgiven!)

But it really isn't so. Germans might sell the highways to the highest bidder (but probably won't). They might introduce greater labor flexibility (and should). They might even lower taxes and further restrict benefits (perhaps in itself not such a bad thing either.) Most reasonable people here agree that the system needs reforming. I think that's just as true among the Social Democrats as among the Conservatives. Belief in the German social system, however, runs deep and wide. Both governing parties recognize a moral obligation to uphold the safety net and promote the redistribution of wealth, and they still believe -- in spite of all the hand-wringing and self-flaggelation -- that the basic model works. Certainly they envy American growth rates, but so what? They envy Chinese growth rates even more. Angie Merkel is no more likely to imitate Reagan and Thatcher, than she is likely to start playing Deng Xiao Ping. Europe will remain (obstinately) European, at least for the forseeable future.