Barack Obama Speaks On Relationship With Former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel
OpenLife Nigeria reports that former President of the United States of America, Barack Obama has different yardsticks for accessing different countries and notable individuals in relationship to democratic practice and humane governance.
This, to an extent, has been his post presidential preoccupation.
Reflecting on Europe and it’s economic stimulus including leadership response to engaging issues, Obama, in his book, “A Promised Land,” Obama calls Angela Merkel, immedriate past German Chancellor, “reliable, honest, and intellectually precise.”
He said the chancellor was understandably skeptical of him at first, but the two grew to trust one another.
In the memoir, the former US President offered a slew of praise for Angela Merkel.
He did not, however, resent that skepticism. “For a German head of government, an aversion to possible demagogy was probably a healthy attitude,” he said.
Over the years, he found Merkel to be increasingly agreeable, calling her ” intellectually precise and friendly in a natural way.”
However, he criticized Germany’s policy on Greece during the country’s debt difficulties after the financial crash, when Merkel and then-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) had held fast to austerity and reducing public borrowing as the answer to almost all economic difficulties.
“I noticed that they [Merkel and French former President Nicolas Sarkozy] rarely mentioned that German and French banks were some of Greece’s biggest lenders, or that much of Greeks’ accumulated debt had been racked up buying German and French exports — facts that might have made clear to voters why saving the Greeks from default amounted to saving their own banks and industries,” Obama wrote.
Obama also criticized former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who he felt was “no real counterweight” to Merkel.
Unlike Merkel, Obama wrote, Sarkozy appeared too disorganized to construct a serious plan for economic reform, adding that Sarkozy’s approach lacked “ideological consistency.”
Only recently, precisely June 28, Obama, yet again, revisited his long standing relationship with Merkel on the Smithsonian museum space and occupancy.
He wrote:
As president, I saw Chancellor Merkel lead through crises with her wise pragmatism, good humor, and unrelenting moral compass—and I feel lucky to call her a friend. Grateful for the chance to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture today, a reminder that America is a constant work in progress.”
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