What if they had an election and no one won? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

So says Der Spiegel.

A good, short survey of where the various coalition possibilities stand this morning is here.  To do it any more precisely I would need a chart. 

There are some fascinating echoes of recent events in other countries we know and love. At one point, pollsters were projecting that Social Democratic leader and current Chancellor Schroeder would have three more seats than his conservative opponents.  Didn't pan out.  Chancellor Schroeder's almost-victory-claiming performance has some commentators calling him brilliant, others crazy.   My question:  when will we have screaming Schroeder dolls?  And check here to learn how complex things get if no government has been formed by October 18, when Schroeder's term officially ends.  (Not so bad, the electoral college...)

Heather, you're being flip again:  Why does this matter?  Craig Whitney reminds that Germany exports more than any other nation and is a central player in the EU.  But that's understating the case:  Germany is a central player on the cast of issues where politics and economic meet.  Will the EU get off the dime on agricultural reforms and push past the US on trade liberalization?  If Germany provides the momentum.  Other issues where Germany plays the impetus-or-spoiler role range from Iran-nukes to UNSC reform (if that remains relevant) to maintaining forward motion in the Balkans.

But there's another, broader reason.  Malaise.  (An aside:  Jimmy Carter never said it.  The word was in pollster Pat Caddell's memo to him.)  This divided vote, with a strong protest component against broadly-unspecified change and reform, is in many ways a continuation of the anti-EU treaty protest votes we saw in the Netherlands and France earlier this year.  Some of the more panicky-toned commentary that came out before the election reflected the fear on the one hand that Germany and Europe are stalled, have lost momentum; and that on the other hand, the German and European way of life and standard of living are under threat.

Lots of bad answers to this have emerged, but no good ones.  And I would argue (as I sit in the state tied for highest unemployment rate in the country, 40 miles from the poorest big city in the country) that the hyping of fears about terrorism in the US overlays a rather similar concern.  What to do about globalization -- how to regain both the reality and the popular sensation that we own it, not the reverse?

Some Germans think that a "grand coalition" of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats might provide space for new answers, and new leaders, to emerge -- that, along with significant social unrest, is the legacy of Germany's only previous "grand coalition," in the late 1960s.  But can that still happen?  And what's the analogy for countries without the possibility of coalition politics?

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