Those Who Wrote Off Merkel Were Wrong Again

How many world leaders can go 24 hours non-stop, debating policy minutiae with bitter rivals and truculent allies -- and hammer out a deal more or less on their own terms? Certainly not many, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of them. For the umpteenth time, she proved she was being written off too early by reaching a preliminary coalition deal with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

This is already the longest post-World War II period in which Germany has gone without a government -- the election was in September -- and the round of talks between Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), their Bavarian allies from the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD that began on Thursday morning and ended early on Friday has also made history as the longest ever. Merkel's effort to give Germany a stable government (as opposed to a minority cabinet or a new election) has been a teeth-grinding slog that has left her visibly in worse shape -- but then, younger politicians than the 63-year-old chancellor might not have lasted; and some didn't. One memorable image from the CDU's failed talks with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens last year was a washed out-looking FDP leader Christian Lindner, 39 years old, announcing after an early-morning breakup of the negotiations that it was "better not to govern than to govern falsely." His party has been punished for this in the polls since, scoring lower than it did in the election.