It helps to connect a face with a name.
Posted on 07/15/2005 6:38:18 AM PDT by lowbuck
Angela Merkel, who is likely to be Germany's next chancellor, yesterday compared the battles she faced to those fought by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
Mrs Merkel, 50, said she wanted to persuade Germans to believe in themselves again, arguing that, unlike Britons, they suffered from a chronic lack of self-confidence.
"Can Germany belong again to the global winners?" she asked. "I need to believe it can and I vehemently oppose the idea that Germany is excluded from this chance.
"I want Germans to be proud of their country once again. Then I will be happy."
She strongly indicated that she saw the Britain shaped by the former Conservative prime minister as a role model for Germany and its rising unemployment, powerful unions and sluggish economic growth.
The Thatcher legacy was definitely something Germany could learn from, according to Mrs Merkel. "I have great respect for the economic policies of Mrs Thatcher," she said.
"At the start of her rule, Britain had 75 per cent of the income per capita that Germany had. Today it is 117 per cent of the German level."
But she tempered her praise by saying: "Mrs Thatcher did not succeed in everything. For example, I think of the privatisation of British Rail."
Britain's rail problems have received much coverage in Germany, which takes pride in its train network but fears that, if the economy does not improve, the efficiency and cleanliness of the service may be under threat.
Mrs Merkel, who is shown by polls to be on track to lead her Right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union to power in elections this autumn, also had a word of praise for Tony Blair.
She said that the current chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, should, like the Prime Minister, have had the courage to carry on reforms started by political rivals.
"Chancellor Schröder made the grave mistake right at the start. . . of undoing the reforms of the previous government," she said.
"Tony Blair did not do that with the Thatcher reforms and the results of that we can see for ourselves."
However, Mrs Merkel, nicknamed Germany's Maggie or Iron Maiden, dismissed the constant personal comparisons between herself and Lady Thatcher.
She said: "The two things we have in common are that we are women, which is far from something that can be taken for granted at the top level of politics, and, like me, she was a natural scientist - an interesting resemblance."
If elected, Mrs Merkel, who was brought up in the communist east, would be Germany's first female leader and the youngest chancellor in the country's history.
She is viewed in her party as slightly eccentric - a remarried, childless woman of protestant stock who presides over a male-dominated, predominantly Catholic union.
As I have written before, I hope she is just sandbagging until an absolute working majority is achieved and then she tells the Germans the truth and dishes out the painful medicine to get the country going again.
interesting article
Looks like both members of the Ambiguously Gay Duo (Chirac and Schroeder) are gonna be out pretty soon.
It helps to connect a face with a name.
"I want Germans to be proud of their country once again. Then I will be happy."
"...No, no, Jacques, don't surrender; I didn't mean it that away!"
Chirac isn't up for reelection until 2009.
Truely? I thought he was ending his current term sooner.
No matter, Chirac's so off-base even the French are getting sick of him. Maybe he'll go the way of Marie! We can only hope.
My first thought was Iron Maiden is british.
My theory is that she thinks the medicine must be delivered in doses, with each dose given a chance to show its affect. She has to bring the German people along with her, and they are probably not ready to take all the medicine at once.
"I want Germans to be proud of their country once again. Then I will be happy."
And...Now... it's...Springtime for Merkal and Germany....
If reelected in 2009 he will become the longest-serving executive of France since Emperor Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte III.
That seems unlikely.
Chirac wants to die in office; otherwise it will be jail for corruption.
He'll be 76 in 2009. He'll be old enough to plead leniency for humanitarian reasons by then.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
Interesting recap on the original Iron Maiden, Margaret Thatcher, at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/thatcher_margaret.shtml
"if the economy does not improve, the efficiency and cleanliness of the service may be under threat... Mrs Merkel, who was brought up in the communist east, would be Germany's first female leader and the youngest chancellor in the country's history."
IOW, if the economy doesn't improve, the gov't there will cut the jobs of the janitors? And that would be better than privatization?
Merkel will receive votes from women who ordinarily would go like zombies to vote for the lefties. Her opponent doesn't have the enthusiastic support of much of anybody, so it wouldn't surprise me if the margin of his defeat on the 18th will be larger than predicted.
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