For anyone hoping for a decisive break from the strategic ambiguity of the Angela Merkel era, the election of Armin Laschet this past weekend to lead her party into the next German election was a disappointment.
Laschet, leader of Germany’s most populous state, North-Rhine Westphalia, and now the frontrunner to replace Merkel as chancellor in late 2021, was the candidate of continuity in a race against two political rivals—old-school conservative Friedrich Merz and modernizer Norbert Rottgen—who were promising to take the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Germany in a new direction.
