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Auf Wiedersehen

Well, it’s all but official. Outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced he will not be a part of Germany’s new grand coalition government, effectively ending his political career.

I’m a big fan of social democracy, but I gotta say I’m a little disappointed with Schröder. After seven long years in office, he could never quite get Germany “over the hump” in terms of their biggest post-reunification problem - unemployment. It’s somewhere around 12% right now. In one of the biggest economies in the world, that’s just unacceptable. Although he did break ranks with the Social Democrats on issues of welfare reform with Agenda 2010, he just couldn’t sell the German public on his vision. His attempt to help Jacques Chirac convince French voters to ratify the EU constitution was a colossal failure, and in hindsight was a rather accurate indicator of his diminishing political power.