In the morning, the CDU leader prevailed over the changes to citizen income, and in the evening a new book celebrated him as the "indomitable". Tuesday was made for Friedrich Merz.
A day that one could only wish for as an opposition leader: After Friedrich Merz played out in the past two weeks that the governing coalition cannot get its new citizens’ money through the Bundesrat against the will of the Union, the traffic light buckles after a short resistance and agrees to hard compromises. The protective assets for the first two years of receiving aid are reduced, the so-called trust period, a first six months without sanctions, has disappeared from the law entirely.
"This period of trust will be completely canceled," the CDU leader announced after the agreement, "and basically the core of citizen income, as the coalition had planned, has been completely canceled," he adds, possibly to ensure that the press present also interprets the Union's success in an appropriate manner.
It sounds correspondingly unconvincing when Merz explains a few hours later in a Berlin conference room on the citizens' income decision that it is "not about the category winner and vanquished. The federal government should not feel defeated and we do not feel like winners".
It is quite obvious that Friedrich Merz's demeanor has already switched to statesmanlike at this point, which can be easy for him, because he is surrounded by concentrated benevolence: The book "The Unbending" is presented here. It tells, you guessed it, the story of Friedrich Merz and the "most spectacular comeback in the history of the Bundestag," as the spine of the book promises.
Jutta Falke-Ischinger, former political head of the "Rheinische Merkur", and Daniel Goffart, chief reporter of the "Wirtschaftswoche", have described Merz's setbacks in politics, his move to business and finally the way to the top of the CDU on more than 300 pages . How he "now wants to lead the Union back to the Chancellery" is also explained in the book, even if Merz himself has avoided statements to this day about whether he already sees himself as the Union's candidate for chancellor for the 2025 election. This question has been clarified for the author duo.
As a counterpoint, the book publisher has invited the former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, according to the classic interpretation a political opponent of the protagonist, who seems to have distanced himself so far from politics that his ambitions to refute the content of the CDU leader or even only to criticize, go to zero.
Gabriel much prefers to ponder the fact that one sometimes finds more friends with political opponents than in one's own party - which is not surprising at this point in view of Gabriel's unwillingness to throw a few SPD positions into the ring, so that it is still possible could be a politically exciting evening.
The Social Democrat is more likely to roll out a rug for the Christian Democrat by stating that Germany's task with regard to climate change is to prove that climate policy can go hand in hand with successful business. "Otherwise nobody will follow us," says Gabriel. The question is still open, how to create climate protection without loss of prosperity.
A thread of argument that Merz likes to take up when he names climate protection as the central topic of this time, but as a political strategy only demands that Germany must "overcome its latent skepticism about technology" and come to a positive assessment of the latest technology. The climate conference failed because too much "was talked about avoidance, not about recycling or separating CO2". Merz would also like to see the possibilities of nuclear fusion as a technology discussed again.
Between friend Gabriel and the benevolent authors of the books, Merz can occupy a comfortable position, which transfers the solution of the problem to technical development. In this way, he avoids having to position himself on the fact that there is broad agreement among well-known climate researchers that massive and rapid steps are needed to avoid CO2 in order to cope with the ongoing climate change.
Finally, Merz takes a very positive view of the United States and, despite the Republicans winning a majority in the House of Representatives, sees the midterm elections as a sign of remarkable stability and a "reflection on the virtues of the country".
Then this day in political Berlin comes to an end, a day that must have been very much to Friedrich Merz's taste. About a year ago, Merz had a really bad day nearby: On December 8, 2021, Olaf Scholz was sworn in as Chancellor. "Now it has become practical," Merz stated a few hours later in an interview with ntv.de. Of course, the Union could oppose. "But getting used to the fact that we now have to do this every day", the CDU "will find it difficult one day or the other". November 22, 2022 will hardly be one of those days.
