If Donald Trump is the world’s most colourful politician, Angela Merkel is probably the least. She is resolutely tedious even by the standards of German politics. The new German verb merkeln means “to do nothing, make no decisions or statement”. She never talks about a “German dream”, and you will not see her campaign under the slogan, “Make Germany great again”.
Even when she suddenly opened Germany’s borders to more than one million people last summer, she phrased this quixotic act in pragmatic language: “Wir schaffen das,” “We can do this.” Germany’s centre has largely held since, despite big advances for the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland in last Sunday’s regional elections. Even amid the migrant crisis, most mainstream German politicians have remained boring pragmatists. Their aim: very slowly improve most people’s lives a little, while averting disaster.
That distinguishes Germany from other large countries. In the US, France and Russia, politics is couched in the language of dreams, greatness, heroes and utopia. There are pragmatic political cultures and utopian ones, and, oddly, it’s the pragmatists who get closer to utopia.