The turning point triggered by Putin’s war against Ukraine has produced a completely new type of politician who can do anything but be principled. He has to be careful not to stumble to the finish line last like Friedrich Merz, but should be self-doubting like Robert Habeck, preferably with a messy hairstyle. And he should be able to celebrate the failure of his own convictions.
You don’t want to anticipate the jury, but “Zeitenwende” is the word of the year. Time has turned us. The successful politician of today no longer has to be principled, but flexible, i.e. agile. What is needed is no longer the ideologically hardened believer, but a political flexitarian.
If you want to be valid for something, you leave your old standpoint as noisily as possible in order to move into a new one – for the time being. He and she stand in front of the audience as particularly capable of learning.
However, the flexitarian must take five things into account so that the change of position is also politically worthwhile for him:
From this point of view, Olaf Scholz did everything right when he announced on Sundays (not on weekdays) in the Bundestag that the SPD would play a role in defense policy backwards. He justified the 100 billion for the armament in an exemplary manner in front of his pacifist-leaning faction leader: “February 24 marks a turning point in the history of our continent. The world afterwards is no longer the same as the world before it.”
Gabor Steingart is one of the best-known journalists in the country. He publishes the newsletter The Pioneer Briefing. The podcast of the same name is Germany’s leading daily podcast for politics and business. Since May 2020, Steingart has been working with his editorial staff on the ship “The Pioneer One”. Before founding Media Pioneer, Steingart was, among other things, Chairman of the Management Board of the Handelsblatt Media Group. You can subscribe to his free newsletter here.
The former children’s book author knows about the effectiveness of a plot line in which the forces of darkness – directed by Vladimir Putin and his gas mafia – go into battle against the luminous figures of the traffic light coalition. The good guys must now be the tricky ones, i.e. buy coal instead of gas so as not to end up shivering as the stupid one.
The former ostrich admirer and current bee protector Markus Söder – who switched seamlessly from “Team Caution” to “Team Opening” and back again during the pandemic – has achieved a championship in this strategy. However, in this carnival of maneuverability there is a risk of confusion. The audience still needs to be able to identify the man behind the many roles: who is that and if so, how many?
