Merkel’s Shaking In Public Casts Doubt On Her Political Clout
Patrick Howley
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Angela Merkel has repeatedly trembled in public, raising concern about her political future as her team scrambles to handle the public relations fallout.
Her shaking during a military parade first sounded alarms in the press and among the European people, whom Merkel lords over as a European Union power broker.
She shook again recently in Berlin:
On the surface, Ms. Merkel’s two recent trembling episodes within the space of 10 days, which followed a previous incident two years ago in Mexico, have been a strikingly low-key affair in Germany, a country fiercely protective of privacy.
Tight-lipped advisers planted the idea that the second recent episode was psychosomatic, brought on by the memory of the first. The chancellor herself deflected questions in Japan, saying she had “nothing special to report.”
“I am doing fine,” she said.
And that was that…
In Brussels this week, Ms. Merkel failed to muster her hallmark consensus-building powers and steer her peers even to her second-choice candidate for the European Union’s top job…
Ms. Merkel’s anointed successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who last fall won the contest to succeed the chancellor as head of their conservative party, has seen her approval rating drop sharply in recent weeks as questions about her capacity to lead the party into the next election have grown louder.
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