Armin Laschet was often underestimated but in the end he always made it. A pattern that could also be repeated on Sunday, when the Germans will vote, since the distance between the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, leading in all the polls for weeks, has gradually narrowed. Born in Aachen, 60, married with three children, Catholic, legal and political studies behind him and a past as a journalist, Laschet faces one of the most difficult elections ever for the Union (CDU-CSU), running for the succession of a Chancellor as iconic as Angela Merkel, whose departure has naturally upset the internal balance of the party and reoriented part of the electorate. A challenge made even more difficult by friendly fire: with a rampant and much loved aspiring candidate, the leader of the CSU Markus Soeder,
Laschet went through all the pitfalls with his good-natured smile, just like when I bring home, even tearing them, the election as party president on January 16.
Faced with the clamorous errors of the Greens he was then able to regain altitude, attracting again the confidence of the Germans in his party, but a chuckle behind the President of the Republic commemorating the victims of the July flood in North Rhine-Westphalia, Land of which and governor, it had the effect of destroying his election campaign. From that moment, with personal and party polls in a dive, the man who embodied continuity with Angela Merkel and the certainty of a centrist line based on the ‘weiter so’ (keep it up) has allied himself with the hawk and former opponent Friedrich Merz, the economic and financial face of his team for the future, trying to recover the consensus of the most conservative and focusing on the mantra of the debt brake and solid finances,
In January he had convinced the CDU to vote for him with a speech well done. He had told of his miner father, throwing a lucky mark out of his pocket and addressing his party colleagues in an affable and reassuring manner: “I’m not perfect in the representation, but I’m Armin Laschet and you can trust me”. He is not lacking in political and administrative experience: he joined the Bundestag in 1994, five years later in the European parliament, in 2012 he became president of his Land Party, which he has been managing since 2017 as governor. “Those who successfully lead a region like Vesftalia can also be chancellor”, Angela Merkel said of him, expressing a belated and tepid support that seemed to everyone to be yet another sign of the desperation of the CDU. Yet three points away (the Union and 22%, the Spd al 25) could easily be overturned, and even if he arrived according to Armin he would not give up the ball easily. Merkelians like him would be willing to act as a junior party in coalition with the SPD – which, however, wants them in the opposition – and can count on the fact that Christian Lindner, the head of the liberals who will tip the balance for the next executive, he would rather make cards with them than with Olaf Scholz.
Simple trait, gentle manners, committed to transmitting to the Germans the image of a man of the people, Laschet revealed that he spent the nights chained in front of the TV series: “I need little sleep,” he told the interviewers of the female Bunte, also if that angers the wife. He who knows how much he can sleep in these days after the threats of Bavarians who want him out if he does not become chancellor.
