Aigner's nomination: The woman of the hour

I lse Aigner will become Federal President, and that's a good thing. Not because she is nice, not because she can get along with people, not because she is politically experienced, not because she has a clear compass of values ​​and not because she has repeatedly shown the right-wing extremists in the Bavarian state parliament where the hammer lies. Sure, all of these are good, no, very good prerequisites for Aigner's new job.

But what speaks most in Aigner's favor and ultimately made her nomination inevitable is the broad base that supports her. She is not the CSU candidate; behind her are large parts of the SPD, the Greens and - as has recently been shown - also the CDU. Of course, one could have spent weeks weighing up which other possible candidate had what qualifications, discussing overly transparent arguments about whether a Federal President should have studied law and, and, and...

And there is no question: there are certainly other women - perhaps even men - who would be up to the job. Aigner doesn't have to be the best of all possible candidates. But she is the woman on whom a strong democratic majority in Germany can currently agree. Not in the sense of the lowest common denominator, but out of conviction and sometimes even enthusiasm. And that is exactly what is important now if the future head of state is to play a role in overcoming the divides in our society.

In short: Ilse Aigner is the woman of the hour. The fact that it became so also has to do with a strange dynamic, in the creation of which Friedrich Merz played a large part. The “dignity of office” is an overused term and should not be overstated. But it can hardly be denied that the search for candidates has recently gotten out of hand and degenerated into an inappropriate spectacle.

The CDU leader should have either been actively involved in the search for candidates in a timely manner, possibly brought in a similarly strong candidate, or put an early end to the wild confusion, especially among his own people, by supporting Aigner himself. With that he could even have gotten one over on his rival Markus Söder.

He didn't. But unfortunately he screwed it up - and thus further damaged his reputation. You don't have to be a friend of the Chancellor to recognize the danger posed by this ongoing self-dismantling. In the end, it will not be the democratic parties that benefit from it.