As always, candidates will be checked in five categories; read the criteria here.

From rags to riches: Merkel was born in Hamburg, but moved to East Germany in her early childhood, when her father, a priest, was offered a job there. He occupied a leadership position within the church, but his wife wasn’t allowed to work as teacher and stayed at home to raise Merkel and her two siblings. After studying physics and working at the German Academy of Science, Merkel joined the reformist GDR government after the Wende and later became a minister under Helmut Kohl and eventually CDU chairwoman and Chancellor. While raised by academic and well-off parents, the extra hardship of having to grow up in the Zone and then making it in the Alphamale-dominated CDU give Merkel a well-deserved one and a half Obamas.

Diversity:  Merkel can only score with her gender here, a half Obama.

Vitality:  She is in her second marriage and has no children. A witness says he saw her take a swim, but no photographic evidence has emerged. A half Obama.

Web 2.0:  Neat website, 16,816 Facebook supporters (more than twice as much as her SPD opponent) and a sophisticated social network that allows grass-roots organizing. She did regular video podcasts during her tenure as Chancellor and has no Twitter account.  Near perfection, two Obamas.

Policies: Merkel supported the stimulus package passed at the start of the year, supports the current Afghanistan mission and has been ambiguous about admitting Guantanamo detainees. She wants moderate tax breaks for most Germans and no tax increase for top earners. One Obama

Total:

With the candidates of the five major parties now tested, let’s take a look at the final score:

5th Place: Guido Westerwelle

4th Place: Oskar Lafontaine

3rd Place: Renate Künast

2nd Place: Frank Walter Steinmeier

2nd Place: Angela Merkel

When there’s a tie at the Olympics, both contestants get a gold medal. No such easy cop-outs here! Sorry, Angie and Frank, but there’s only one Obama and you’re both not even close.

From rags to riches: Künast was born in Recklinghausen to a auto  mechanic and a nurse. She first studied social work and was employed in a penitentiary before she began studying for her law degree. One Obama

Diversity: Nothing to report here, but since women are still underrepresented in German politics she gets a half Obama.

Vitality: Künast likes inline skating and running and eats healthy, but admits her work keeps her away from regular exercise. She has no children. One Obama.

Web 2.0: A neat website, Facebook account with 1,848 friends, no Twitter and a social network that looks good, but is more of a glorified mailing list. One Obama.

Policies: Künast wants Germany to accept Guantanamo inmates, she supports ISAF (unlike the Green Green Party’s  base) while opposing OEF and wants a strong stimulus with more green elements and without tax cuts.  One Obama.

Total:

With four and a half Obamas, Renate Künast is the top-points-getter in our series so far but still miles away from total Obamaness. Will Vice-Chancellor Steinmeier of the SPD get there? Check back soon.

From rags to riches: Lafontaine was born in Saarlouis to a baker and a secretary; his father died in World War II. His mother, who raised him and his twin brother alone, sent Lafontaine to a Catholic boarding school where he got his Abitur. One and a half Obama.

Diversity: Nothing sets him apart from the typical German. But at least he has a French surname and since the Saarland is practically a part of France, he gets a half Obama.

Vitality: Lafontaine is 65 and that’s how he looks. He’s in his third marriage with a total of two children. He sustained life-threatening injuries in an 1990 assassination attempt but quickly returned to politics, so for perseverance he gets one Obama.

Web 2.0: Lafontaine has a simple website that mainly caters to voters in the Saarland and not the federal level, no Twitter account and a Facebook page without content. A half Obama.

Policies: Lafontaine advocates a much stronger stimulus package than the one passed by the German government, a tax of 80% for the top income bracket and, diverging slightly from Obama, wants to nationalize all banks and overthrow capitalism. He also wants German troops to completely withdraw from Afghanistan and has not voiced an opinion on Guantanamo inmates. Zero Obamas.

Total:

With three and a half Obamas, Lafontaine did only marginally better than Westerwelle. Obviously we haven’t found the German Obama just yet. Will we next week? Check back then!

German politicians craving for voter attention hope to get at least some of that Obama-glamour for themselves. We will test how obama (new adjective!) the candidates of the five major parties really are.

In five categories, the politicians can get up to two Obamas each, with a total maximum of ten Obamas. Here is what we’re looking for:

From rags to riches: Obama was raised by a single mom, living off food stamps at times. His father was out of the picture for most of his life. He graduated from public high school and eventually got degrees from two Ivy League schools, Columbia and Harvard. To gain Obamas, candidates need to come from humble beginnings and faced hardships on their way to the top.

Diversity: Obama’s father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and has relatives living across the world. He married a woman from the South Side of Chicago. To score in this category, candidates should diverge significantly from the typical German politician.

Vitality:  Obama is 47 and exercises daily. He regularly plays golf and basketball and managed to raise two daughters despite his career. Candidates need to appear youthful, be physically active and ideally have produced offspring to get Obamas here.

Web 2.0: The Obama campaign revolutionized campaigning on the Internet. His website features its own social network, he’s active on YouTube, Twitter and the like and has over 6 million Facebook supporter. German candidates need to come close to that for maximum Obamas.

Policies: Obama supports a strong stimulus package to restart the economy, with both big spending and tax breaks for the middle class. He plans to raise taxes for the rich and has announced to increase the troop presence in Afghanistan. Obama wants Europeans to admit some of the detainees of the soon to be closed Guantanamo Bay. Policies are always the trickiest to compare. Candidates are checked for their position on economic stimuli and taxation and on their stance towards the Afghanistan War and detainee admittance.

So who is the German Obama? We begin with the candidate of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Guido Westerwelle.

From rags to riches: Westerwelle was born in Bad Honnef, his father is a lawyer, as is his mother. That’s a triple fail, zero Obamas.

Diversity: He is a white, ethnic German male, but then also gay, gaining him one Obama.

Vitality: Westerwelle is three months younger than Obama, he likes beach volleyball and mountain biking. He has no children (sure he’s gay, but he could have adopted). One Obama.

Web 2.0: A website straight from 1999, no Twitter account, 1,266 Facebook supporters and no own community. A half Obama.

Policies: Westerwelle called the German stimulus package unsuitable and instead advocated tax breaks across the board, including for rich Germans. He supports the Afghanistan mission, but not sending additional troops and said Guantanamo inmates are mainly the concern of the U.S. A half Obama.

Total:

With only three Obamas out of a maximum of ten, Westerwelle clearly failed the Obama Check. Wanna know whether the other candidates fared better? Check back next week, when we test Oskar Lafontaine of the Left Party.

You can find all the posts of this series here.

Several sources report that U.S. President Barack Obama will anounce Phillip D. Murphy, a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs, as the new U.S. Ambassador to Germany.

Murphy, 52, has been in charge of the Democratic Party’s finances, after he left Goldman Sachs in 2006. As an investment banker, Murphy has headed the German branch of Goldman Sachs in the 90s, and was involved in several deals with the Treuhand-Anstalt.  He will replace William R. Timken, who has left Berlin in January.

Atlantic Review points out that the new man in the American embassy is a board member of the U.S. Soccer Foundation, which sounds like he might enjoy a smooth start in Berlin.

Justice David H. Souter has announced his retirement from the court. Rumor has it Souter wanted to retire after the Supreme Court had to decide Bush v. Gore in 2000, but waited until a Democratic President would be available to name his successor. All this after Souter had initially been named to the court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush, but, as the New York Times writes, “became one of the most reliable members of the court’s liberal wing”.

Now this opens up a great challenge for President Obama, and expectations are high: Will he add diversity to a mostly male, Harvard / Yale educated bench with little private practice experience and a geographic tilt to the Northeast? Will he choose a pragmatist over an ideological nominee? A woman, someone who is part of a minority?

With all the speculation and shortlists, thank God Fox News’ Foxnation.com is there to ask the really important question:

Why aren’t any white males considered for the Supreme Court?

Of course, Foxnation’s commentators can be relied on to tell us why this screaming injustice is allowed. Essentially, Barack Obama is a racist. (This is voiced by some posters, with a few lamenting the fact that Whites are called racist when they hate African-Americans, but not the other way around.)

Another poster argues that “Republicans and Conservatives are a minority”, too, and should therefore “sue the Administration for their place on the Surpreme Court”. While I admire this logic, I will also make sure to bookmark the post for the next time some pundit seeks to define the USA as “a center-right nation”. Others say white males always have to pay for the “lazy” parts of the population (women? Hispanics? African-Americans? all lazy?).

Some sane voices point to the fact that this is fabricated hysteria by Foxnation, or that  other posters “confuse minority with liberal.” But somehow, they’re still drowned in the senseless chatter around them.

I need to ponder all this input now, but will try to come up with a somewhat coherent answer to Foxnation’s question. Though I’m not sure that’s possible. Anyway, enjoy reading.

Update, May 5: The New York Times also has this fun interactive feature where you can say who you’d choose “If you were President…” My favorite suggestion so far: Bill Clinton.

The First Ladies of Fashion - Screenshot from vanityfair.com

Now, one would think that when world leaders from 20 and 28 countries, respectively, meet within a week, there would be important issues to discuss. Such as how to save our economies in midst of the worldwide financial crises, how to save Afghanistan from chaos, or how to save the financial industry from new regulations (this last point was only on the agenda of some participants, and seems to pose a contradiction to point no. 1).

But then a graceful, tall, pretty first lady entered the picture and everyone was momentarily blinded. The result was that the focus of the media outlets shifted from world conflicts (they’re so hard to convey to the fast-clicking internet crowd anyway) to Mrs. Obama’s outfits. Scandalously, she wore a cardigan to meet the Queen! This prompted Bonnie Fuller to scream that Michelle Obama has lost her mind! and is suddenly “a fashion disaster”. Wow, good thing we talked about that. Afghanistan – who? (What might be added: Bonnie Fuller – who?)

The Obamamania caught on with “serious” news outlets as well, even though their interpretation was different. Christoph von Marschall of Der Tagesspiegel concludes that the visit to Europe “stabilizes her position.” Michelle Obama’s, that is. As U.S. First Lady, it’s apparently essential to have a stronghold in Europe.  Even the complicated links of international relations were broken down to the questions of which first lady dressed better. The result of this “fashion face-off” varies depending on the observer, so at least the two issues have one thing in common.

In all the marvelling, some publications completely lost their heads and even made German Chancellor Angela Merkel part of the outfit competition. The subheading to their picture (see screenshot) says: “Barack and Michelle Obama pose with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, along with other NATO leaders and their wives at the Kurhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany.” Thanks, Vanity Fair, for informing me that Joachim Sauer has taken over government activites from his wife. I almost missed that.

The Afghans were left to save themselves, but I’m not sure anyone noticed.

Update, April 5: Time has written an interesting analysis about the dissonance between Barack and Michelle Obama’s worlds.

By Jessica Binsch

But, the creative minds of the CDU didn’t not stop there. tapmag can’t help but recognize the new logo from some other quite successful campaign…

The German election 2009 might look just like the US election 2008—literally.

(via Subjektivitaeten)

There is help to make the right decision. One solution is to pledge to deliver your next paper on time. If you fail, you will donate a significant sum to charity. In this scenario, the short-term incentives to keep delaying are contrasted with the somewhat clearer long-term consequences of loosing money. The question remains—why do we fail to make the right choice so often, and how can we improve?

The problem lies in human nature. We are good in long-term planning, but carrying out our decisions seems awfully complicated. Humans are good “planners”, but bad “doers”, to use two terms coined by economist Richard H. Thaler and law professor Cass R. Sunstein, who also heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The two have published “Nudge – Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness” last year, in which they deal extensively with how to turn us into better “doers”.

Their book fits in with the Obama approach of intelligent government and the general reappraisal of intellectuality. At the same time, it highlights the greatest problems with the kind of government action this school-of-thought puts forward.

Predictably Irrational

Thaler and Sunstein are both of the University of Chicago and were both informal advisors to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.  And, they both have worked on the intersection of rational economic decision-making and the predictable irrational behavior of most humans when it comes to economic decisions. The intellectual background of the book is formed by “behavioral economics“, a subfield of economics that integrates the systemic biases of human action into traditional economic models.

The basic premise is that since people don’t seem to think very hard about the choices they make, policy makers should use their knowledge of the systemic biases to “nudge” people into making better decisions. A nudge is any device “that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives,” the authors write.

A “nudge” can take many forms. If you put fruits and salads in the beginning of the cafeteria line, you “nudge” students to eat healthier, since the way choices are arrayed to them influences their decisions. Thaler and Sunstein call the setting in which people make decisions “choice architecture”. Since there is no neutral way to arrange the foods, “choice architects” like cafeteria managers influence people in any case—so why not help the hungry students to improve their decisions about chips or Caesar salad?

Another “nudge” are default options. A lot of patients die each year, because there are not enough organs for transplant available. How can more people be persuaded to commit to donate their organs after their death? They could either be asked to tick a box opting into donation or opting in might be the default setting and they have to actively opt out. The difference? One study found that with an opt in policy, 42% of people agree to donate, whereas with an opt out policy, 82% committed to donate. They were “nudged” to follow the default.

Want more Soup?

The examples for the influence of choice settings go on and on-sometimes to the point of absurdity. One study showed that how much you eat depends on the size of the plate you eat it from. In the experiment, test persons were asked to eat as much as they liked from a bowl of tomato soup, while the soup was secretly refilled from below the entire time. Some people continued to eat until the scientists stopped the experiment.

Politically, Thaler and Sunstein’s ideas are in hot demand. Their book is popular both in circles around Tory leader James Cameron, as well as with the Obama crowd. Now add that Cass Sunstein has just been named to lead the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—there is reason enough to turn attention to the policy recommendations of the book. Thaler and Sunstein offer help for everything from drug prescription plans, student loans, mortgage rates, climate protection to the privatization of marriage.

Whatever the issue, the blueprint is the same each time. The observation that behavioral economics can be helpful in predicting the shortcomings of traditional economics leads the authors to their main idea. Policy makers can use the influence of “choice architecture” to steer people to make better decisions. If economists and political scientists can abandon the thought that people always act rationally, they arrive at the position of Thaler and Sunstein.

Paternalism vs. Liberalism

Their book offers a third way in between two dominant schemes for government action from the last century. Thaler and Sunstein set out to bridge the gap between two of the most influential economists of the last century—John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. The ideas put forward by Keynes suggested a bureaucratic paternalism. His theories were turned into a top-down approach that tried to push rather than to “nudge” people. Keynes’ theoretical challenger—Milton Friedman—trusted the people more than the government; he asked policy makers to let the market work. This approach was especially salient during the Regan-era, when deregulation and limited government interference were de rigueur in the political world—and “nudges” were frowned upon.

Thaler and Sunstein try to unite these two poles in the awkward term “libertarian paternalism”, which sounds like a classic oxymoron at first. The idea is to give a subtle hint what the “choice architect” thinks is the best decision, while the cost of leaving the default path are kept extremely low. This allows policy makers to both target the systemic biases of irrational human action and eliminate the danger that people are not free to choose.

Save More, Earn More

For example, Thaler and Sunstein explain that retirement plans suffer from being overly complex. The authors cite a study that not even MBA-students are able to calculate the optimal savings rate for a retirement plan. So they advise that future plans should have a default setting that raises people’s contributions each year by the percentage that their pay increases.

This idea stems from two psychological insights. People are loss-averse; they hate loosing money more than winning it. Hence the contributions are indexed to the pay so that the paycheck doesn’t shrink. They are also effort-averse; they don’t like to download, fill out and send back the forms that are needed to raise the savings rate. Hence it is raised automatically. This so-called “save more tomorrow” scheme would thus produce a better outcome, as opposed to a plan where people choose one static saving rate and then just forget about it.

The Perils of Freedom

All these suggestions seem like good ideas to improve the outcome of government policies. The book discusses them in great length and detail. The drawback is, as the authors recognize, that the implications of their ideas are not discussed with the same scrutiny. If we can’t trust people to make informed and optimal decisions, why can we trust other people to lure them in the right direction? One failure of the political system is that it doesn’t recognize human irrationality; another is that politicians and legislators seldom act in the purest public interest. The authors fail to dismantle the argument that people need to be free to choose simply because the government tends to make the worse choices.

Another problem is that commercial interests are far better in exercising the techniques of “nudging.” The relationship between “nudging,” advertising, and marketing remains unclear. No matter to what extend the government “nudges” people to eat bananas instead of burgers, the junk-food corporations will tell them the opposite.

Can we Trust Humans?

And finally, if you say that people’s wishes, as expressed by their decisions, do not always match their real requirements, you have an argument to abandon their freedom altogether. But do scientists always know best? No, they do err quite frequently. That is why they give recommendations instead of prescribing policy.

Thaler and Sunstein mention the introduction of plastic bags in Chicago that dog owners can use to dispose their dog’s excrements. People were effectively “nudged” to use them, which the authors cite as a success. Now, people in Chicago use tens of thousands of plastic bags each year to remove organic waste that would eventually dissolve itself—a great success for pedestrians, a rather small accomplishment in terms of environmental protection. However you use “nudges”, your aims will always be up for discussion.

Which is not to understate the magnitude of the ideas Thaler and Sunstein present to the reader. They acknowledge that “nudging” needs an extremely high willingness of policy makers to reveal their true motifs to justify their actions. Sure enough, the techniques can be exploited. But if the influence of “choice architecture” is known, it is negligence to ignore it. The trick is to tell people about what you have in mind, instead of using the power of the “nudge” to manipulate them.

By Kolja Langnese

“Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness” by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (Yale University Press, 2008; 293 pages).

More info: www.nudges.org

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Foreign Minister, Vice-Chancellor,  Social Democratic candidate for Chancellor and all around Obama fanboy started the discussion by preemptively offering to accept some detainees even though the new U.S. administration hadn’t even asked (although they are expected to). This deeply offended Wolfgang Schäuble, Christian Democratic Minister of the Interior, who wasn’t consulted beforehand.  He apparently considers them to be a security risk to Germany, but then, people in general are a security risk in the eyes of Schäuble.

Schäuble got cover from his nerdy sidekick Wolfgang Bosbach, vice chair of the CDU caucus,  who essentially told the United States., and I’m paraphrasing here, “you break it, you own it” on the Gitmo situation. (Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, General Secretary of the Christian Social Union, also offered words of  support for Schäuble, but I’m only mentioning him so I can drop his incredibly hilarious name. Thank God we kicked the Kaiser out a long time ago!)

The debate exemplifies the difficulties Europe has in dealing with a post-Bush America. While the Europeans condemnation of Guantanamo Bay was nearly universal, they were equally glad that the U.S. was doing all the dirty work when dealing with captured terrorist suspects. For example, German Special Forces operating in Afghanistan were ordered to “restrain” captured individuals instead of arresting them because the latter would result in them being subjected to German law, which prohibits extradition when the individuals face torture or the death penalty. So when U.S. troops arrived at the scene, the Germans were supposed to “release” the captives for the Americans to arrest.

Now that President Obama by ordering the closure of Gitmo is actually doing what countless politicians in the Old World with good reason demanded, Europeans are mostly playing duck and cover. They don’t feel responsible for the 50 or so detainees that can’t be repatriated to their native countries for various reasons, never mind that many European governments participated in the war in Afghanistan and quite a few turned a blind eye to extraordinary rendition flights. Austria is hiding behind its laws, saying they limit asylum to refugees — and regrettably the Guantanamo inmates do not qualify. Great Britain says it has already done its share, by taking back British citizens held at Gitmo. Instead it graciously offered its expertise in dealing with the detainees.

But still, up to seven EU countries might be willing to accept a few inmates. At least some are doing their part. Others need to follow or Europe will once again show that it chickens out when things become difficult.