Granted they make an odd couple, but I have come to the conclusion that Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are secret soul mates. The US president and the German chancellor both like to think hard about things. No harm in that. Sadly, careful deliberation also serves as a shared excuse for inaction.
It seems a stretch, I know, to draw parallels between a Democrat in the White House and a Christian Democrat in Berlin’s chancellery. One is a lawyer, the other a physicist. The matronly Ms Merkel is not the sort to rouse the crowds by proclaiming: “Yes We Can!”.
True, as a child of communist East Germany, she is something of an outsider as far as the German centre-right establishment goes. That’s not quite the same as being America’s first black president.