In naming German chancellor Angela Merkel its “person of the year,” Time has made a bold departure from tradition. Often as not, the magazine gives the honor to a vague collectivity: “the Peacemakers,” “the Whistleblowers,” “The American Soldier,” “the Good Samaritans,” the “Ebola fighters,” “the Protester,” and even—at its nadir of editorial inspiration in 2006—”You.” And even that was an improvement on its practice of the 1980s, when Time conferred its honors on inanimate objects (“the Computer,” “the Endangered Earth”).
Merkel, by contrast, is actually a person. She actually did a great deal of importance this past year. She forced a plan on recalcitrant Greeks to resolve the crisis of Europe’s single currency, the euro. She opened her own country’s borders to hordes of refugees from the Syrian civil war.
But when Time says the chancellor’s actions show “steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply,” The Scrapbook can only ask whether Time is joking. If there is one thing the planet is producing a glut of, it is “moral leadership.” It seems to be more ubiquitous than atmospheric nitrogen or cell phone coverage. The president pursues it to the exclusion of other kinds of leadership. Anyone who acquires a billion dollars or stars in a Hollywood film feels competent to provide it. Others are beginning to get a bit sick of it. You might say that one man’s “moral leadership” is another man’s “bossing people around.”
And so the award has a valedictory feel. Merkel’s 2015 actions were certainly bold, but the consequences may be dire. More refugees are coming—many, many more than Merkel herself thought possible, and from many, many places in the Muslim world other than Syria. Their families will join them. The Paris terrorist attacks shocked Europe, brought massive victories for the right-wing National Front in France in December’s regional elections, and have not gone unnoticed in Germany, where right-wing extremist parties are on the rise. The “solution” that Merkel worked out to Greece’s economic problems is actually just a stopgap. Greece cannot remain in the euro without further, bigger contributions from Germany. Too bad. Merkel may need this money to calm a citizenry increasingly on edge.
