In the days after Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton were tapped for the new posts atop the European Union, the criticism from the assembled European press was nearly unanimous. It was also only half right. The journalists were correct to point out the EU's failure to promote leaders with the charisma and energy of a Tony Blair, or the expertise of a Carl Bildt, or the vision of a Joschka Fischer. They were right to say that Europe has likely abdicated for now the chance to develop a grand strategy to compete with the United States and China.
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But they were wrong to suggest that any flaws on the part of Van Rompuy and Ashton are insurmountable. The EU's new leaders bear a remarkable resemblance in style and substance to one of the EU's current biggest players, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, once pilloried by the press for being staid and boring and now a respected leader of the world's fourth-largest economy. She possesses an acknowledged mastery of consensus, promotes fuzzy lines of authority, uses occasional backroom ruthlessness, and has a vaguely articulated belief in her country's steady progress. It might not sound inspiring. But it's a model that Van Rompuy and Ashton, by temperament and necessity, are liable to follow.
Ever since Merkel was first sworn into office in 2005, political journalists in Berlin have bemoaned her colorlessness and reticence. The German public, by contrast, has consistently given her approval ratings above 70 percent. Merkel's rival politicians demanded more direction and drama; the public proved content with steadiness and platitudes.
The same elite-mass divide was mirrored in the reaction to the selection of Van Rompuy and Ashton. Journalists from Europe's major newspapers unloaded days' worth of negative editorials lamenting the continent's self-exile to the perdition of obscurity. But meanwhile the European public shrugged, with no indication that their generally positive perception of the European Union had in any way been impaired.
Merkel has a keen sense for the strategic advantages of ambiguity. Never a risk-taker, throughout her steady accumulation and consolidation of power in Berlin, Merkel has prioritized consensus over setting bold agendas. Rather than publicly demand new directions, Merkel delegates other cabinet members to consider shifts in policy, while she presides over the discussion, ready at any time to tack in either direction as the political winds change.
This strategy allows her to take credit for popular decisions, while distancing herself from unpopular ones. Merkel allowed her rival Social Democrats (the SPD) to take the lead in setting an agenda for Germany during the four years she lead a "Grand Coalition" comprised of the SPD and her own Christian Democratic Union. But Merkel also instructed her party to co-opt the policies that polled well and proved successful -- from the stimulus package that kept the country afloat after the onset of the financial crisis, to popular new parental leave policies, to the emphasis on fighting global warming. It was a strategy that frustrated some of Merkel's own party members, but it led this year to the SPD's worst electoral showing in German history and allowed Merkel to create her preferred coalition with the Free Democratic party.
Van Rompuy and Ashton will also no doubt embrace roles as moderators, rather than agenda-setters. In fact, the quickest way for the new leaders to threaten their own authority would be to overpromise, given the limitations of their positions. The European Council over which Van Rompuy will be presiding makes its decisions by unanimous consent of the 27 EU member states, as does the EU's foreign-policy apparatus to be headed by Ashton. And Van Rompuy and Ashton will only be able to marginally sway the perceptions that other European countries have of their own national interests.
On the other hand, they have one major resource at their disposal: continuity. It's a quality that no previous occupant of Van Rompuy's new position has ever enjoyed. With the Lisbon Treaty having scrapped the member states' half-yearly rotating presidencies of the EU, Van Rompuy will now have at least 30 months atop the European Council. The practical implications of such a change for politicking are obvious enough, with the council president now better equipped to pursue goals, build relationships, and make trade-offs that extend beyond the framework of six-month increments.
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