From leader to loose end
What should Angela Merkel do in retirement?
Other ex-politicians offer examples of what not to do
ANGELA MERKEL once said she wanted to leave politics before she became a “half-dead wreck”. On December 8th the 67-year-old German chancellor will make good on her pledge, stepping down after 16 years to make way for a coalition led by Olaf Scholz. Beyond catching up on her sleep, Mrs Merkel has offered few clues as to what she might do next. What inspiration might she draw from other retired leaders?
The chancellor does appear to be finished with politics. Not for her, then, the lure of a job in Brussels, a retirement home for former Benelux prime ministers, or joining the ranks of the greying grandees who wash up at the UN. Nor will she hang around domestic politics like a bad smell, as some former Italian prime ministers seem to.
Mrs Merkel has hinted at a taste for travel in Africa, though perhaps not in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, who donned a pith helmet in 1910 and shot or trapped thousands of animals, including lions, elephants and hyenas. Roosevelt was also the first American president, serving or former, to travel by aeroplane. Perhaps Elon Musk, currently having trouble building a Tesla gigafactory outside Berlin, might be tempted to offer Mrs Merkel a quick jaunt in a SpaceX capsule?
If astral projections prove a bit much for this most grounded of chancellors, might space cakes prove more of a draw? Vicente Fox, a former Mexican president, and John Boehner, a former speaker of America’s House of Representatives, have reinvented themselves as marijuana tycoons. Mr Scholz’s plan to legalise cannabis in Germany might offer his predecessor an opening. Mrs Merkel may not have energetically pursued the tokers’ cause during her four terms, but she is nothing if not ideologically flexible. No doubt the chancellor could find a fertile spot in the Uckermark to cultivate strains with home-grown appeal: Deutsche Kush, perhaps, or Bundeshaze.
Retirement can tarnish one’s reputation. Mrs Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, swapped the chancellery for the boardrooms of Russian energy firms, and has shilled for Vladimir Putin ever since. Two of the four French presidents Mrs Merkel has worked with, and several prime ministers, have been convicted of corruption. A staggering proportion of South Korea’s ex-presidents have ended up in prison; one killed himself to avoid prosecution.
Publishers will bid for Mrs Merkel’s memoirs. She should rebuff them. Politicians are seldom good chroniclers of their own careers. David Cameron, for whom Mrs Merkel had a soft spot, retreated from the Brexit chaos he unleashed to a designer garden shed to write an unreadable brick of book. Koizumi Junichiro, a well-coiffed former prime minister of Japan, set a better example. Following a script from a professional writer, he voiced the character of Ultraman King in “Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy”, an entertaining superhero flick.
A modest chancellor may seek a modest retirement. On losing office in 2018, Mariano Rajoy, an ally of Mrs Merkel during his seven years as prime minister of Spain, simply returned to the job as municipal land registrar he had left three decades earlier (his colleagues in Santa Pola had helpfully kept the post open). Yet driving a bus, like Fred Teeven, a Dutch former state secretary of justice, or collecting rubbish, like Ann-Sofie Hermansson, once mayor of Gothenburg, may be a step too far. And although Mrs Merkel enjoyed her student years in Leipzig, she is unlikely to be found scooting around its streets delivering pizzas, the fate that has befallen Syed Saadat, who served as Afghanistan’s telecoms minister until 2018. (No doubt the highly accomplished Mr Saadat could tell the chancellor a thing or two about her country’s failure to recognise qualifications in migrants.)
Academia may appeal more to Mrs Merkel (PhD quantum chemistry, 1986), not least as her husband, also a chemist, has a year left on his research contract at Berlin’s Humboldt University. The chancellor has said that the 19 universities around the world that have given her honorary degrees will hear more from her. Should she wish to dive back into research she might find a model in Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a former Icelandic president who, like Mrs Merkel, served for 16 years, and has spent her 25-year retirement indulging her twin passions of theatre and linguistics.
Mrs Merkel could get rich, if she wants to. But it is far from clear that she does. Surely she will shun the lucrative consultancy gigs and directorships that tempt many other ex-leaders. (Her monthly pension of €15,000 will easily cover the grocery bill.) Mrs Merkel has a mixed record as chancellor, but her exit from power has so far been a model of grace and restraint. Glancing around the globe, she will find plenty of examples to avoid. Perhaps other leaders should instead take lessons from her.