More laborious for the Chancellor will be nailing down a willing coalition partner -- or even an unwilling coalition partner, if it comes to that. But the CDU's coalition partner will inflect that legacy, not least because of the conservatives' dearth of substance, one of the factors accounting for the CDU'S poor performance. The centrist Merkel, a liberal in her own party, is jokingly referred to as "Germany's best Social Democratic chancellor ever." In the post-war decades, the liberals were the CDU's standard coalition partner, both of them right-wing parties. Indeed, before heading up the free world, Merkel has to lead Germany and hopefully, together with Macron, Europe, too.

Source: CNN September 24, 2017 19:41 UTC