On Wednesday, that which Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition had been fearing -- yet never officially allowed as a possibility -- came true.
Her candidate for German president, Christian Wulff, needed three rounds of voting to be elected.
It is a fiasco for her and her government. Twice Wulff stood for election. And twice he failed to capitalize on the comfortable majority enjoyed by Merkel's conservatives and their junior coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democrats, in the Federal Assembly. It is a rebellion that Merkel and her ranks only managed to contain in the last moment. Had they not been successful, Berlin's political scene would have quickly become unrecognizable.
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