Merkel146;s sudden Green turn hit with Germans

Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to have realised that, contrary to the song lyrics, sometimes it8217;s quite easy being green.

Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to have realised that, contrary to the song lyrics, sometimes it8217;s quite easy being green. Merkel has shied away from the biggest fight at home: the deep economic restructuring she advocated during her campaign two years ago. And on the matter of the suspected terrorist plot in the heart of Germany, she has remained in the background, apparently happy to cede the limelight to her interior minister, Wolfgang Schauml;uble.

But in the past month Merkel could be found inspecting glaciers in Greenland and calling for new measures to combat global warming at a conference in Kyoto, Japan. It was as if Ronald Reagan had turned into Al Gore after being elected. But the voters loved it, awarding her the highest approval ratings any chancellor has enjoyed since World War II.

8220;She has learned her lesson,8221; said Josef Joffe, the publisher and editor of the weekly paper Die Zeit. 8220;No more of this neoliberal stuff, no more blood, sweat and tears, no more change.8221;

Germans seem happy with their plainspoken physicist-turned-politician. Merkel may lack the flamboyance of her new French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has stolen some of her thunder on the international stage, with his post-election flurry of activity. But that seems to play well here.

8220;She doesn8217;t have to make her hands dirty in things that are in critical discussion in Germany, like terrorism and surveillance,8221; said Paul Nolte, a professor of contemporary history at Free University of Berlin. And terrorism is not the winning electoral issue in Germany that it can be in the United States 8212; privacy concerns mean that it can cut both ways.

Merkel8217;s political instincts appear much sharper than anyone gave her credit for after she barely scraped into office. In the weeks leading to the election that brought her to power in 2005, Merkel appeared poised for a solid victory 8212; at one stage leading by 17 percentage points.

Instead she eked out a razor-thin margin that forced her into an unwieldy alliance of historic rivals, the so-called 8220;grand coalition8221; of the center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats. That was the day most observers pronounced any radical change for the employment laws, health system and pensions dead on arrival.

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At heart, local analysts said, the German people did not really want aggressive reforms. They were more than content to let the state care for them, from kindergarten all the way to retirement.

Hobbled as Merkel appeared at the very outset by the coalition government, few observers could have predicted her current success. She enjoys sky-high approval ratings 8212; 70 per cent or higher in multiple recent surveys. Another recent poll found her trouncing her chief rival, the Social Democrat Kurt Beck, by 42 percentage points.

But the poll presumes a direct election for Chancellor, which is not the case in Germany. The national election battle set for two years from now plays out instead among the political parties for seats in Parliament. Those polls for the moment show a continued deadlock among the major parties.