

German election diary: Posters everywhere but no attacks - guruz
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2013/08/german-election-diary-0

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mhaymo
> attack ads, like Super PACs, are unimaginable here, legally and culturally.

Legally? There are laws preventing certain kinds of criticism of political
parties, and we're celebrating this?

Perhaps it's because I haven't seen many attack ads (as a UK citizen who
doesn't watch adverts), but I don't get the hatred for them. Is informing the
populace of the downsides of your opponents' positions not better than putting
contentless posters all over the city?

~~~
this_user
Germany politics are and have been for the last couple of years in a rather
curious state where the opposition appears to have given up on attacking
Merkel in any meaningful way. I think there are several factors that play into
this.

First of all, after the 2005 election a grand coaltion between Merkel's CDU
and the social democratic SPD was formed leaving only the three smaller
parties with a combined 166 out of 614 seats as the opposition. This put the
SPD in the position of the CDU's junior partner instead of their usual
position of attacking the CDU's political agenda. What may be even worse from
the SPD's perspective is that the are now in the position of having supported
the decisions made in Merkel's first term which would make it less than
believable to attack those decisions now.

In the 2009 election the CDU only lost a marginal amount of votes while the
SPD suffered heavy losses to the benefit of the three smaller parties. This
allowed Merkel to form the traditional coalition consisting of CDU and the
liberal FDP thereby leaving 290 of 622 seats to the oppposition and allowing
the SPD to resume their role as the main force in opposition.

Except they never did. Instead of mounting attacks on the government, they
stayed tame and oftentimes even concurred with the government on decisions
despite no longer being in power. I am not sure about their reasons. Their
lack of charismatic leadership personnel may have played a role, but that can
only explain so much.

The second and more important factor is probably Merkel's very specific style
of governing. She tends to be extremely passive, never exposing herself and
opening herself up to criticism. If possible, she avoids making decisions at
all. If she has to make decisions, she will always take the popular choice. If
hard or controvesial decisions have to be made, she never makes a proposal
herself. A proposal is either leaked to the press or presented by one of her
ministers. In case said proposals garners widely negative reactions, the
minister takes the blame giving Merkel the opportunity to shield herself from
the fallout. Should an extraordinary event like the Fukushima accident lead to
a sudden reversal in public opinion (towards nuclear energy in this case),
Merkel will immediately flip her position and take the opposite one. If you
have paid close attention to German politics in the last couple of years, you
will see these exact steps repeated over and over again.

The worst part is, it works. Her latest approval rating is at 60% compared to
25% for the SPD candidate. Somehow she has managed to lull not only to public
but also her political opposition to sleep over her two terms in office. This
leaves us in 2013, a month away from the election with an opposition that
behaves more like her pet kitten than her political challenger. What is even
worse, is the fact that it leaves the population without a real choice for
political change.

~~~
LinaLauneBaer
_If she has to make decisions, she will always take the popular choice._

Are you saying that this is a bad thing? I am always surprised when people
demand from politicians to make unpopular choices. Isn't that a bit
schizophrenic?

~~~
kayoone
There are alot of good long term decisions that are unpopular in the short
term. Merkel mostly optimizes for a positive short-term outcome, especially
this close to the election.

Thats more like a global problem with the current form of democracy though.

~~~
lostlogin
Yes, and there are lots of popular short term decisions that would be terrible
in the longer term. Lower taxes, yay. Block immigration, hard on crime with
long jail terms for minor offenses, deregulate banking etc. Just recently I
had a friend who voted for the party that promised to lower taxes complaining
about the lack of staff, being overworked and not having a pay rise. He works
in a publicly funded institution. People don't seem to think even 2 steps
ahead.

~~~
kayoone
Exactly...most of the countries with really high taxes are the most stable
financially for example.

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strongvigilance
Perhaps this is partly due to the multitude of parties, which in turn is due
to the nature of the electoral system?

In a two party system, a lot of people feel like they are voting for the
lesser of two evils, so negative campaigning is presumably far more helpful to
your cause.

If you have to compete with multiple parties for votes, you need to offer more
than simply criticism of the opposition.

~~~
dimitar
There are a lot of people protesting the current multiparty proportional
system in Bulgaria. They don't like the coalitions, the lists of candidates as
opposed to individuals, the indirect election of prime minister (biggest
coalition appoints one).

However I am very skeptical that changing the political party structure
changes much. Aren't in the end the Republicans and Democrats just two big
coalitions of movements that tolerate their coalition partners? If you had a
multiparty system you'll get a liberal party, a conservative party, a far-
right party and maybe a libertarian party. And they'll form long-run
coalitions just like they do in multiparty countries.

In a multi-party system you are still probably voting for the lesser of two or
more evils. In Bulgaria between 4 and 7 factions in parliament so its
definitely a multi-party systems, although parties like to place themselves on
a left-right spectrum and ally accordingly.

Did it have attack ads in all the elections? Absolutely! Ads target everyone,
including smaller parties, to get votes from them and create guilt-by-
association to their actual or potential coalition partners. You obviously
don't target you partners, so thats why a right-left divide seems to appear...
so you can claim you get a two-party system, you just have the primaries
during the actual election.

~~~
Pxtl
Hey, Bulgaria, want to trade?

Here in Canada, the government goes to the party with the most seats, and each
seat is handed out in a small regional FPTP election. What this means is that
our elections go through _two_ first-past-the-post filters instead of one. In
2008, the Conservatives faced all the other parties aligning against them to
throw them out and, through a trick of procedure, they managed to keep control
of the government. They were elected with only 38% percent of the vote - the
minority ruled as a majority.

~~~
alanctgardner2
Lots of people unhappy with the Conservatives seem to have this idea that a
minority government means they have no mandate to rule, etc. Personally,
doesn't it represent the country better to have multiple parties with non-
majority representation? If you keep winnowing down until you give most of the
power to one group which the majority of people don't mind, they can push
through whatever legislation they want with impunity. I would rather have the
population represented proportionally by MPs who share their views, so that
legislation lives or dies by what proportion of the general populace supports
it.

As an (extreme) example, you could have parties with different opinions on
disjoint issues, like abortion (A) and legalizing marijuana (B). You could
then have four parties, AB, A'B, AB', A'B', and some of the populace would
vote for each of them based on their support of those issues. If you require
that some party 'wins' and gets a majority, people have to work to rank the
parties by least distate, by preferring some issues over others. With a whole
bunch of minority parties (ideally 2^n, with n binary issues), every voter
could actually encode their whole stance on a set of issues, and bills on that
issue would pass or fail proportional to the support of the populace.

My point being, FPTP might not be the best at the riding level, but there's no
reason to mess with which party becomes 'the government'. The country is well
served by the existing Parliamentary system. The Senate, on the other hand...

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marijn
Actually, some of the posters from Die Grünen (Green Party) have a rather
personal taste to them. See [1], which shows Merkel and Röstler (figureheads
of the current ruling parties) with the caption "It's always someone else's
fault". And then of course, there's the fringe parties, like [2], saying
"Which ass will you choose this September?".

[1]:
[http://www.gruene.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Bilder/Webbanner/...](http://www.gruene.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Bilder/Webbanner/plakat6_540x382.jpg)
[2]:
[http://img01.lachschon.de/images/153979_WelcherArschdarfsden...](http://img01.lachschon.de/images/153979_WelcherArschdarfsdennsein_1.jpg)

Of course, that's still kittens and rainbows compared to the rabid, poisonous
insanity that is considered normal in the US.

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darxius
I'm from Canada, and there are attack ads everywhere. I can't stand them.
Instead of using your money, your time and your effort trying to destroy
another candidate, tell me why you're better. I think it's by and large one of
the major reasons I have little faith or interest in the politics of my
country.

------
igl
What is there to attack, when they are all exactly the same? Germany will hop
between SPD and CDU forever. With 0 change. The greens and FDP are merely
helpers to fake some noise in our mindless american-style media apparatus. I
don't even bother with voting. Politics only distracting you from what is
real.

------
hyperventilator
Does any candidate support closing US military bases in Germany?

~~~
arrrg
They are irrelevant and a non-issue on the federal level (I cannot remember
when they were last publicly discussed there, much less controversially
discussed). They are about equally irrelevant on the state level and certainly
also not controversially discussed there.

On the very local level (city, county, region) they can be an important issue
– but the perspective is nearly always an economic one: The base as a large
employer in a region that might grow or shrink or close down. Best city
marketing approaches for getting Americans from a nearby base to come visit
and buy stuff. It’s always stuff like that.

Ok, I guess I can think of one current somewhat heated issue that was recently
discussed and that I noticed, living somewhat close to a base and all – but,
again, only on a very local level: the US Army being allowed to fly drones for
testing purposes (also outside of and between two of their bases). But even
there the discussion is not exactly a shouting match and never even connected
with any kind of argument to close bases.

I think the general consensus in Germany is that having the US as a tight ally
is a good thing. And you don’t throw a tight ally out of your country,
especially if what they are doing there is (at least perceived as) completely
harmless. Sure, there might be widespread general disagreements with the US
military strategy as a whole, but that does not, in general, lead people to
want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to say.

I think you might be able to rally quite a few people around a hot button
issue like the stationing of nuclear weapons in Germany (but I’m not even sure
whether the US still does that), but throwing out the US? Not really.

If you are an American who wants to close all US bases in Germany quite a few
German politicians would be indifferent or worried about the US-German
relationship and many local politicians with a nearby base would be furious
about you taking away all those jobs (not that the bases matter for the German
economy in general in any significant way).

~~~
hyperventilator
>especially if what they are doing there is (at least perceived as) completely
harmless

Umm. The citizens Iraq and Afghanistan might disagree with you.

