Malte Lehming

“Stop It!” was the headline in the Spiegel news magazine two weeks ago. The cover showed Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel and Free Democratic Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle with stony faces against a pitch-black background. Competitor Focus wondered on its front page how much longer the government would last. The opposition, too, was smelling blood. “This government has failed, and if they realize this, early parliamentary elections would be the cleanest approach,” said the head of the Social Democratic Party’s parliamentary faction, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. No wonder that, at the high point of this campaign, 53% of Germans expect the government to collapse prematurely.

This reality-denying hysteria was never related to facts or probabilities. Fortunately, the fuss most likely will soon blow over. Yesterday, Christian Wulff, Mrs. Merkel’s candidate, was elected the new German president—not on the first two ballots, it’s true; the chancellor had to cope with a few renegades, but Mr. Wulff was elected, and that’s what counts. This should make it clear to even the biggest skeptics who’s governing the country. Mrs. Merkel is back, not triumphant, but she never scores glorious victories, just hard-earned ones.

And there really has been little harmony over the last nine months, since Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Westerwelle began governing. In particular, the Free Democrats, who received a respectable 14.6% of the votes, were suspected of serving only their own clientele with their demands for lower taxes. The coalition partners fought publicly—not always with kid gloves on—over health reform, the continuation of military conscription, and a drastic austerity program. Then they lost the important regional elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. As if that wasn’t enough, President Horst Köhler, a favorite of Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Westerwelle, unexpectedly threw in the towel.

The chancellor picked a successor within a few days—the upright, colorless, relatively young governor of Lower Saxony, Christian Wulff. The Social Democrats and Greens, however, achieved a coup by entering Joachim Gauck in the race. Mr. Gauck, a prominent human-rights activist in East Germany, is charismatic, rhetorically skilled, on the conservative side ideologically, and popular. With this nomination, the opposition hoped to split the conservatives.

But that bubble burst as well. The special assembly of parliamentarians and public figures—in which the governing coalition had a nominal majority—made Mrs. Merkel sweat through three rounds of voting, but her candidate did in the end win. She has always been underestimated, only to ultimately prevail. She succeeded after all as a Protestant, East German woman in the male-dominated, Catholic, Western-oriented Christian Democratic Union. She has mastered the virtue of endurance, which often infuriates her opponents. She knows that what counts are not smoke and mirrors and pretty words, but figures, data, facts. And they are on her side.

Her Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, left behind five million unemployed, even without a global financial and economic crisis. Under Mrs. Merkel, despite the crisis, the unemployment rate has dropped and will soon fall to three million. The economy is improving, turning the country once again into Europe’s growth engine. The automobile industry, in particular, is booming; assembly lines at Daimler, BMW and Audi are working overtime. Companies are responding to the strong growth in demand with extra shifts. Some factories have had to postpone summer vacations.

This economic activity, meanwhile, takes the pressure off the treasury. This year and next, the government will probably take in €5 billion to €7 billion more in taxes than expected. The decline in short-time work adds an additional €1 billion to the treasury. And the largest austerity package in German history was adopted by the cabinet without income-tax increases.

Internationally, too, Mrs. Merkel has prevailed. At the summit of the Group of 20 leading developed and developing nations in Toronto, the German principle of savings and solid state finances successfully defied U.S. pressure for higher investment. Even the new British Prime Minister David Cameron is on Mrs. Merkel’s side. And in the euro rescue campaign following the Greek crisis, Mrs. Merkel succeeded in involving the IMF. This did strain the patience of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but in the end it gave her leverage to encourage Athens to save.

Those who avoid reality will not acknowledge these facts, but will continue to dream of mutiny against Mrs. Merkel. The German commentariat will likely use Mr. Wulff’s torturous election as confirmation that they were right to predict the chancellor’s premature demise. The opposition will take solace in the fact that the governing coalition was not 100% united yesterday. It’s not much comfort. Germany has a new president, Mrs. Merkel is still in power, Lena won the Eurovision contest, and the German soccer team has been playing pretty well. Maybe the bad mood will soon adjust to the good times.

Mr. Lehming is op-ed page editor of Der Tagesspiegel. Belinda Cooper translated this essay from the German.
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