Christian Wulff's demise makes Angela Merkel stronger

Christian Wulff is no longer president of Germany. To which only one thing needs to be said: good news. For two months he tried desperately to pretend that cultivating secret links with influential people in big business was a perfectly normal thing to do for a minister, a matter of friendship even. Increasingly, fewer and fewer people bought that line. Even the public prosecutors, initially hesitant about coming down on Wulff, eventually concluded that the former governor of Lower Saxony's links with people in business were dubious and suspicious.

And yet, right until the end Wulff somehow didn't clock that it might be easier for a powerful politician to win over influential friends than for a normal citizen. Apparently he never even questioned it. He didn't act like a responsible head of state, but like blue-eyed little Christian from Osnabrück, meandering down the corridors of power. Right until the end, it didn't look like he grasped the difference. Now he is being investigated by the German authorities.

That the whole affair has been dragging on for several months is not just due to Wulff's stubbornness, but also the fact that, for too long, other politicians have struggled to find their voice on the scandal. The restraint with which the other parties reacted to the renewed allegations against Wulff is shameful. The common excuse is that they didn't want to damage "high office". But while Wolff might indeed be to blame for damaging the post of the presidency, those who stayed quiet are to blame for much more: namely the damage to the entire political culture in the country. When figures of authority are allowed to enter a grey zone in which nepotism and friendship are hard to tell apart, politics loses credibility. It's damaged even more when no one in power criticises these conditions.

Angela Merkel has stayed relatively quiet in this affair so far. She only gave Wulff just about the support he needed, not more. This led to the strange result that Wulff's crisis actually worked out to Merkel's advantage in the polls: she is now by far the most popular politician in the country. And that even though her coalition government has increasingly been struggling to land any punches in the national political debate. Everything around Merkel is collapsing, yet somehow she manages to emerge from the wreckage unscathed. Whether you like her or not, that's no mean feat.

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