On October 9, 2008 the day of the second US presidential (so-called) debate in Missouri, Angela Merkel was in Mali, making the very difficult trip to a country torn in half by east/west political and religious disputes that have turned it into a battleground for a brutal civil war. It is clearly one of the most dangerous parts of Africa or for that matter anywhere, and it is widely expected that Canada will soon send special forces troops to join the French contingent there in attempting to help restore order to a battered land, once better known for its splendid music. And that seems to be the only reason that Kanzlerin Merkel was also there.
It was exactly sixteen years earlier to the day that Angela Merkel became the Kanzlerin of the recently reunited Federal Republic of Germany. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor in the old East German Peoples Republic, she was relatively young and not very experienced at 50, and it’s fair to say, in retrospect, that no-one imagined at the time that she was potentially a long-term Powerfrau in the tricky world of German politics, and that within a decade she would enjoy a reputation as the most powerful and respected government leader anywhere nor that she would soon become the most honoured politician in the world. But in the sixteen years during which she became the longest-ruling leader on a floundering continent where, after a catastrophic war that had ended little more than a half-century before her inauguration, Germany has under her leadership become the uncontested economic and arguably even moral centre of Europe.
And yet there she was on a day when she could have enjoyed a bright spotlight in Berlin, offering help to a country in great need of it, far from home and very far from a place that could bring her political gains. At home in this last year she has made decisions declaring Germany’s willingness to accept virtually all refugees (almost a million at this point) from a terrible war zone, and that has cost her some popularity. But she still says “Wir schaffen es” (“We’ll make it work”) and she still enjoys the support of more than 50% of the German population. Most experts believe her party will win the upcoming German election if she decides to run again.
Hard to imagine that on that same day, the two candidates running for Head of State of the United States, still the most powerful military presence in the world, could put on such an embarrassing and demeaning piece of sordid entertainment as the so-called debate. One can forgive the female candidate, Hillary Clinton, for gradually starting to look like a smiling robot, since that must have been because the overwhelming thuggery of her opponent Mr. Trump, often lurking threateningly just behind her, was something she could not have been prepared for. But what does it say about the political system that allowed such a spectacle to take place after it slowly simmered into a boil in the course of more than a year? My advice for Mme Clinton is to take a break after she wins (which she will) and go over to Berlin and have a long talk with the woman who has walked the walk rather than just talk the talk.
