Merkel's Fourth Election Will Be Her Toughest

Angela Merkel's announcement on Sunday that she will run for a fourth term as chancellor was hardly unexpected, given her role as the world's foremost centrist, one of Europe's last bulwarks against the hard right and a leader who doesn't really have a credible rival in Germany. Yet she will probably face the toughest election of her career; victory is far from assured.

The German parliamentary democracy doesn't impose term limits on chancellors. Yet voter fatigue with a leader who will have run the country for 12 years by election day will be a factor. "You know me," Merkel told voters in 2013; and they liked what they knew. Now, Germans may know Merkel a little too well for comfort. And many suspect that, for all her skill at working out impossible compromises and pulling out of impossible situations, she doesn't really have a plan for taking the country forward, whether tackling refugee integration or social security reform.