General Discussion

Here in Europe, each country tries to carve out its own path. Even small, previously ethnically homogeneous countries like NL, Scandinavian countries, had their own ways. Tip O’Neill was still right: all politics is local. NL is currently an absolute mess.

Post-war West Germany in particular went back and forth, although they had the advantage of the watchful eye of their occupiers (France, GB, USA) maintaining that watchful eye on the writing of the West German postwar constitution. They had a hard time reconciling the all-powerful bureaucratic state (very Prussian) with the benevolence of the “never again” Germans such as Adenauer and Willy Brandt. The Social Democrats reached the height of their popularity under Brandt and his protégé, the very savvy Helmut Schmidt, who held weekly phone conversations in fluent English with his center-right counterpart, French president Giscard in Paris. DeGaulle and Adenauer used to talk in German, which DeGaulle spoke very well. How many postwar American presidents have spoken Russian? How many postwar Russian leaders have spoken good English? (If you count Putin’s number two, Medvedyev, then there has been one). Putin does speak fluent German, from his time as part of the Soviet KGB “brotherly” presence in East Germany. But since no recent American president has been fluent in German, no one-on-one has been possible.


The German Social Democrats have since floundered into a rudderless group of bureaucracy-loving sloganeers (mehr Gerechtigkeit!), and were rewarded in a recent national election with under 20% of the vote, a scandalously low embarrassment. Some local SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) politicians have fared much better, mostly by ignoring the direction of the national party.