The Chancellor Who Played with Fire
If Angela Merkel is unlucky, the eurozone crisis will come to a head at the start of the German election year in 2013, rendering moot all previous calculations, because, despite Germans’ frustration with Europe, the electorate would punish severely those who allowed Europe to fail. And Merkel seems willing to do just that.
BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel should be happy nowadays: her party’s approval ratings aren’t bad, and her own are very good. She no longer has serious rivals within the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), while the left opposition is fragmented into four parties. Her response to the European crisis has prevailed – or at least that is the impression that she conveys, and that most Germans believe. So everything is fine and dandy, right?
BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel should be happy nowadays: her party’s approval ratings aren’t bad, and her own are very good. She no longer has serious rivals within the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), while the left opposition is fragmented into four parties. Her response to the European crisis has prevailed – or at least that is the impression that she conveys, and that most Germans believe. So everything is fine and dandy, right?