Started with high hopes, ended up in the difficult reality.
(Photo: dpa)
On the one hand, the fact that the Green Economics Minister loses poll points faster than the hopes of the German economy follows political principles: those who rush up the popularity scale indecently quickly are particularly likely to simply fall off the top. On the other hand, the Habeck case is not a typical Icarus story. Because the causes of his fall lie less in the media up-and-down mechanisms and more in a missed opportunity for the Greens: They did not remedy two structural deficits before entering the traffic light coalition.
For one thing, the Greens have failed to adjust the hopes of the (electoral) base to a reality in a red-green-yellow government at the head of a troubled industrialized country. On the other hand, they did not identify as a risk the tendency of many Green politicians to value euphonious visions more than political craftsmanship.
Both are now forcing them – and above all the economics minister, who is the focus of particular attention – to make decisions that fewer and fewer voters understand and whose negative consequences are becoming increasingly difficult to handle using the Habeckian communication principle. For reasons of internal perspective, the government Greens are forced to make compromises such as those in the nuclear debate that do not follow any communicable logic. And they then muddle through these – for example the gas surcharge – in such a way that some of their projects have an even shorter lifespan than the time Anne Spiegel, the former Minister for Family Affairs, had in office.
And so the crisis of Robert Habeck is above all a crisis of the Greens as the governing party – which is to be regretted insofar as their goal of a climate-neutral industrialized country in a strong Europe was important and would still be right. Curiously, the Greens are now succeeding in being less assertive as the governing party than they were before in the opposition. Until a year ago, black, red and yellow competitors feared that the Greens were supposedly more future-proof and growing potential voters, so they adopted parts of green ideas as their own. The Greens had an interpretive sovereignty that surpassed the interpretive power of many a member of the government.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Little on the plus side for regular voters and the economy
If you wanted to turn this lever of the pseudo-political giant into power, you would have had to take precautions. This would have included preparing the expectations at the base for the realities: The Fridays-for-Future activist, the pacifist or the queer activists will now be able to do little with the green government results. And for those parts of the economy for which the Greens meant hope for an ecologically liberal awakening after the sluggish years of GroKo, there is currently little on the plus side.
But that would also have included taking the craft of converting ideas-through-the-machine-into-laws seriously. For example, by comparing the papers of the bouquet of NGOs, which sprout particularly in the green environment, with reality. Just because you make good NGO managers state secretaries does not automatically wrest a functioning law from the apparatus.
>> Read also: Nuclear power plant reserve, gas levy, TV appearance: how failed decisions are piling up at Habeck
The Greens may have become a governing party in their hearts, but they are not in their heads. Good ideas and a committed base do not make government policy.
After all, those who have young members and ideas but don’t know the trade are better off than those parties in traffic lights and the Bundestag, where it’s the other way around. Because you can learn a craft, but you either have the rest or you don’t.
More: economy without ministers