The Economist explains
Why the German Greens’ Annalena Baerbock disappointed many
They had hoped she might become the party’s first chancellor
THE BAERBOCK bubble was short-lived—and burst spectacularly. In the weeks in April after Germany’s Green Party chose Annalena Baerbock, its 40-year-old co-chairman, as their candidate for the chancellorship, the Greens were on fire. An MP for only eight years and co-leader for just three, Ms Baerbock was everywhere—on magazine covers, television talk-shows and the evening news. In some polls the Greens supplanted both established parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). “Endlich anders (at last, something different),” declared Stern, a weekly, in green letters under a cover picture of Ms Baerbock, clad in a black leather jacket, recounting admiringly her ascension from “political nobody to candidate for the chancellorship”. Die Zeit, another weekly, proclaimed Ms Baerbock “die Überlegene (the superior [candidate])”.
Had the Greens been able to sustain the momentum, they could have led Germany’s next government—and Ms Baerbock would have become Mrs Merkel’s successor. But the Baerbock honeymoon did not last and the Greens are now running third after the SPD and the CDU (plus its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) in pretty much all polls. The Greens are still on course to snaffle perhaps twice the share of the vote that they did in 2017, and will in all likelihood be part of the three-way coalition that is likely to be the next government. But they will be a junior rather than the senior partner.
Was Ms Baerbock a victim of her own early success? To some extent the hype about the likeable “Annalena”, who was a competitive trampolinist in her youth and has two young daughters, was such that she was bound to disappoint. But some of her fall from grace was of her own making: she has been accused of both plagiarism, in her hastily thrown-together book, and of padding her CV. At the end of her speech at the Green party convention in June, she cursed “Scheiße” (she didn’t realise the microphone was still hot). She recently irritated free-marketeers by remarking that the “market could not care less about people”.
Individually, each of these missteps is minor. But the sheer number of blunders has dented her image. Many supporters of the Greens now feel the party should have picked as its candidate for chancellor Robert Habeck, a 52-year-old novelist and philosopher who is its other co-leader. Even the usually loyal Mr Habeck implied that Ms Baerbock was nominated because she is a woman, which in turn made him look like a sore loser.
For all that, whatever the outcome of the election, Ms Baerbock is likely to play a role as a minister in the next governing coalition. She has a strong command of policy detail and an easy communication style. And she has lots of innovative ideas, from turning up the ambitions of Germany’s climate-change policy to a more hawkish stance on both Russia and China. She also supports loosening Germany’s strict fiscal rules in order to fund more public investment and a strong commitment to the European Union. The relative novice has almost completed her baptism of fire.