You don’t have to wait until the morning after to find out who won the first of the three big televised trials in this Bundestag election campaign. The survey institute Forsa knows it already a few minutes after the end of the broadcast. The winner is Olaf Scholz. 36 Percent of 2500 supposedly representative respondents would see the top candidate of the SPD in front, it says. Thirty percent said so from the Green leader Annalena Baerbock, 25 percent from Armin Laschet of the Union.
So it’s as simple as that: more than an hour and a half of debate, with a little controversy, a lot of unanimity and recognizable rehearsed roles and the best way to get away is the one who, as the journalist Nikolaus Blome said in the debriefing of RTL, “diesels”in front of him.
That would mean: After sixteen years of Angela Merkel, the Germans still do not have enough of her style of government. Rather, they want it to continue like this, climate change, Afghanistan disaster, they follow the one who says that everything will be fine and that is Olaf Scholz. Scholz is the new Merkel. The only thing missing from the election posters with him is the saying: “You know me.”
How well this works, we have seen in recent weeks and we get confirmed on Sunday evening on RTL. Because there a reporter asks a family about their impressions. The daughter says she chooses Olaf Scholz, the father says he was disturbed by the blame in Afghanistan policy. He does not seem to want to know why the mission in the Hindu Kush failed and who is responsible for the failure, especially in the last days, weeks and months. Turning away from the world thus becomes a political virtue, at least it promises electoral success.
The fact that Scholz was supposedly so well received by the audience was also surprising in the round of chats that RTL offered after the triell, which the broadcaster had fought so hard for as part of its “information offensive”. It must be said that the five “celebrity experts” interpreted their role very differently. Günther Jauch and Nikolaus Blome analyzed what was presented with a certain distance, while the three others – the blogger Louisa Dellert, the dance teacher and “Let’s Dance”juror Motsi Mabuse and the moderator Micky Beisenherz-mainly let us see who they would choose. Motsi Mabuse could not get along with enthusiasm for Annalena Baerbock and disgust towards Armin Laschet.
She didn’t like Laschet’s body language, she found him too aggressive. A more superficial view would hardly occur to us at this point. Which seems particularly apart, when at the same time again and again, but also vaguely, there is talk of the great departure. And then again from the picture of the laughing Laschet at an appointment with the Federal President after the flood disaster. Which should not be overstated, but then again. A weighting of political positions is different.
But the comparison with “Let’s Dance” fits to such an event and its prompt live evaluation perhaps quite well: here it is about steps on stage, about appearance, about impressions. And it’s about a great suggestion. The Trielle, formerly duels, pay homage to the idea that we lived in a chancellor’s democracy. That may be the impression after sixteen years of Angela Merkel in the Federal Chancellery-who has apparently completely closed with her party and, to put it mildly, contributed to its problems.
