An exciting campaign for president of Germany ended on Wednesday with the election of Christian Wulff, the former Christian Democratic minister-president of Lower Saxony. German presidential campaigns are not supposed to be exciting. They are not really even supposed to be campaigns. The public does not vote in them. The post is largely ceremonial. While the chancellor, Angela Merkel, runs the country, the president opens nursing homes and lectures schoolchildren.
In May, on his return from visiting Afghanistan, President Horst Köhler alluded in a radio interview to the economic benefits of German military deployments. He was accused of violating the country’s constitution, and resigned immediately, sparking this week’s election. "We must respect this decision and the reasons for it," said Norbert Lammert, the Bundestag president, a bit sardonically, on Wednesday, "even if many of us still don’t really understand them."
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