WITH GERMANY’S ruling Free Democrats (FDP) flat-lining in the polls, party grandees have decided it is too late to call for a doctor and have instead summoned a surgeon.
Trained cardiologist Philip Rösler was nominated yesterday to succeed party leader Guido Westerwelle after successive state election disasters.
“My candidacy is just a first step,” said Mr Rösler, promising to renew from the ground up the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition. “I’m aware I’m taking over responsibility at a time that is anything but simple for the party.”
At 38, Rösler is used to being the youngest person in the room. Inquisitive and quick-witted, he has proven to be an ambitious political wunderkind, with a rapid rise through the ranks of the FDP to show for it.
At 29 he was the party’s parliamentary leader in Lower Saxony; shortly thereafter he was state party chairman and served as state economics minister in Hanover.
He moved to Berlin and the health portfolio under Dr Merkel at the end of 2009, a job he will keep as FDP leader.
Although a cabinet newcomer, he is the only FDP minister in Berlin with a successful – although admittedly controversial – reform programme under his belt.
A sharp thinker and gifted orator, Mr Rösler is an economic liberal and hates governmental regulation. He is married to a doctor and is father to young twin girls. He commutes between Berlin and his home in Hanover. His increasingly rare spare time is devoted to flying gliders and listening to U2. Other talents include ventriloquism and performing magic tricks, although he will need more than voice tricks and a conjurer’s wand to revive the fortunes of the FDP.
In the last decade, Mr Westerwelle trimmed the party into a tax- cut party: the party’s record 14.6 per cent result in the 2009 general election was down solely to Mr Westerwelle’s promise of tax cuts for all.
When Dr Merkel drew a line through that plan, blaming the financial crisis, Mr Westerwelle’s political credibility evaporated.
Watching from the wings, Mr Rösler has seen the dangers of narrow political focus. In recent years, he has led attempts to renew the party along “compassionate liberal” lines – reclaiming the idea of political solidarity for a party more often seen as a political home for well-off Germans.
“The difference between freedom and arbitrariness,” wrote Mr Rösler in 2009, “is that one can never have freedom without responsibility. We have to finally realise that although there are many things right about our liberal platform, one thing is lacking: a vision.”
The common character trait running through his public interviews and private conversations is humility – something that immediately distinguishes him from his FDP predecessor.
Mr Rösler was born in a Vietnamese village near Ho Chih Minh City in 1973 but was adopted aged nine months by a German couple from a Catholic orphanage. His parents separated when he was a child and he was raised by his father, a professional soldier.
Confidants say he remains a practising Catholic and has never felt the need to pursue his Vietnamese heritage. “One seeks one’s roots when one is missing something, but I don’t feel I am missing anything,” he said.
Mr Rösler’s rise marks a generation shift in the FDP away from the “Berlin Wall” generation of Mr Westerwelle, who was born in 1961, to a generation of professional politicians who are not yet 40.
This generation calls itself the “94 Generation” and had its formative political experience in the final Kohl years, an unhappy time when the FDP was adrift following the departure of foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
This generation remained frustrated under Mr Westerwelle, with his narrow fiscal focus and a 1997 party programme predating the internet, global warming, globalisation and interlinked financial markets. It remains to be seen what the FDP’s “94 generation” will mean for in the EU, which they view as a given.
Dr Friedrich Thelen, a political analyst and FDP expert, said: “Rösler is someone from a new generation where there is simply no debate about Europe, it is an essential part of life and Rösler would never think in national characteristics.
“He will keep the FDP on its pro-European course and, given his own [Vietnamese] background, will defend the international and European perspective against critics who view Germany as an EU cashpoint.”
When Mr Rösler arrived in Berlin at the end of 2009, he insisted he would leave politics and return home to Hanover by 45 at the latest. If he becomes FDP leader at next month’s party conference, his stay might be a little longer than intended.
Yesterday the Süddeutsche Zeitungdaily presented the prospective FDP leader with a two-point to-do list in caricature form: "1. Is the FDP needed? 2. If so, why?"