Germany Moves Left

The most valuable thing a politician has is gravitas. Even a politician with a sense of humor cannot afford to look like a clown. It was partly because he forgot this that Peer Steinbrück, lead candidate of the German Social Democrats (SPD), suffered such a drubbing last week at the hands of the Christian Democrat (CDU) chancellor Angela Merkel. The SPD is not the country’s elite party, like the French Socialists or U.S. Democrats, but it is the main repository of hope on the center-left. Much of the media roots for it desperately. After a televised debate in early September in which Merkel and Steinbrück exchanged platitudes, devoting all of three minutes to the unfolding crisis in Syria, polls showed Steinbrück lagging 15 points behind, just as they had before the debate, and just as they would on election day.