Germany's presidential mess
British monarchists can take heart from the mess that the Federal Republic has recently got into over electing a new head of state - ending up, it seems, with the third choice candidate.
The story so far. Back in February the current Bundespräsident Johannes Rau called it a day after realising that the political configuration of the federal convention (assembled specifically for the purpose of electing or re-electing the president every five years) was not going to give him a second term.
Rau, an old SPD stalwart with a gravelly voice, is a more self-righteous, intellectual version of John Prescott. He has not been a bad president. He is popular with many ordinary Germans but hasn't impressed the elites so much. Some people complain that there have been no memorable, soul-searching speeches of the kind that came to mark the presidencies of Richard von Weizs?er and Roman Herzog.
Anway, after Rau said he would bow out in June, the political and media quest for his successor began. In the case of the media the usual editors, Nobel prize winners, professors, and so on, sombrely declared that the position of the Bundespräsident is central to the spiritual health of the nation, and therefore needs to be filled with someone respected, wise, experienced, impartial, influential, a good listener, a good orator, blah, blah, blah. As ever, the issue of whether the time is now ripe to elect a woman, a handicapped person or an asylum seeker with catholic parents living in the former East Germany, was puzzled over. Someone, as they always do, came up with the populist prank of electing Franz Beckenbauer, the football hero.
But all of this was mainly irrelevant because all you need to be elected president on 23rd May is a majority in that federal convention. That means the winning candidate will be chosen by the party leaders commanding that majority. The three in charge this time, the main opposition leaders - Angela Merkel from CDU, Edmund Stoiber from the Bavarian CSU, and Guido Westerwelle from the flagging Liberals - played hide and seek with the media while trying to thrash out a common position. In the end, all the favourites were lying dead and the chosen candidate of the right was greeted by the main tabloid Bild, with the headline: Horst Who?
Poor Horst K?r, the (former) managing director of the IMF and former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, has been in the firing line ever since. The general view seems to be that he has been living in Washington for too long, he is too out of touch with Germany and her people, and too inexperienced in politics to settle into his new role easily. He also made the mistake of saying that Angela Merkel, the CDU leader who in effect chose him, should be the next chancellor of Germany. As his post is meant to be impeccably ?rteilich this did not go down well.
He might still become a good president, but for the moment he looks like what he is: the third choice. Merkel has admitted recently that she wanted Wolfgang Sch?le, her predecessor at the helm of the CDU, to become president. Then Klaus T?r was suggested, as somebody respected in the outside world: he heads the UN environment programme. When she realised that T?r would not be supported by the CSU, she looked out for other Germans in high international positions.
Germany's few internationals
And the surprising thing is that there was only one other prominent international German - and that was Horst K?r. Germany it seems, despite its economic and even political clout, has not been very good at stocking the international institutions with its own people. The French steer many of their best brains into European institutions, and a stint at the helm of a world organisation is seen as a good career move. But the German elite uses international politics to get rid of people. T?r was sidelined into the Nairobi-based job, because his popularity threatened Helmut Kohl. Horst K?r was second choice to Cajo Koch-Weser, who was vetoed as IMF director by the Americans as too anti-establishment. But now with the Anglo-Saxon model regarded as the best answer to Germany's many problems, at least by the political right, what could be more suitable than an IMF director?
Talking German to the dog
And finally the bad news - for British breeders of Staffordshire bull terriers, at least. The German federal constitutional court, the highest court in the land, has in its wisdom decided that the government was right to ban the import of the rather fierce bull terriers into Germany, while at the same allowing anyone to breed the animals inside the country. For those British dog breeders who want to keep their share of the German market (the animal is very popular with pimps, former fitness-centre owners and bodyguards), the consequence is obvious: when training your dogs in the future, speak German. The necessary words are "platz" (pronounced "pluds," and meaning "sit down") and "fass" ("fuss," bite him). This makes dog smuggling easier and will also boost Britain's dismal figures for foreign language learning.
