I look forward to seeing what type of chancellor Angela Merkel becomes. By all accounts, she’s more pro-American than Gerhard Schroder, although that’s not very difficult. It should be interesting to see how much of an appetite Germans have for free market reforms.
What I find most ironic about U.S. media coverage of the German election is that American liberals are able to see the need for free market reforms in Europe, while still advocating a larger role for government in the U.S. This irony was on full display in a New York Times editorial a day after the vote. The editorial (which I can’t link to), read:
Given Germany’s dismal economic health, there is no alternative to reforms for Germany and for Europe as a whole…
If the two major parties look beyond their rivalries, they could find that they agree on the basics of critically needed economic reforms like lowering employment costs, making labor markets more flexible and simplifying the tax code. And they would certainly have the clout to push a joint program through the Parliament and past the unions. Mr. Schroder called the elections because there was a big job to be done, and the voters agreed.
This is an editorial page that, when writing about the U.S., has argued for higher taxes, a larger government role in health care, more regulation against businesses and stricter labor laws.
To be fair to the NY Times, they are still against a flat tax, no matter the continent. The editorial also read:
Mrs. Merkel seemed to be doing well against Mr. Schroder, a highly skilled candidate, until she blundered by picking Paul Kirchhof, a professor who advocates a flat tax, as her economic spokesman. The idea fell, well, flat.