With Silvio Berlusconi out of the picture, Angela Merkel is arguably the worst leader among the major democracies. But Time magazine apparently disagrees:
Time magazine has named German chancellor Angela Merkel its Person of the Year, citing her resolve in leading Europe through this summer’s Greek debt crisis, and her encouragement of other countries to open their borders to migrants and refugees….By the beginning of 2015, Time said, “Merkel had already emerged as the indispensable player in managing Europe’s serial debt crises; she also led the West’s response to Vladimir Putin’s creeping theft of Ukraine”.
Yeesh. Merkel’s role in “managing Europe’s serial debt crises” has been astonishingly destructive, and if what she did about Ukraine counts as “leading,” Time and I have very different ideas of what that word means. Her government nearly succeeded in scuttling any agreement about Greece, and even her refugee policy, which is morally praiseworthy, probably wasn’t very sensible.
Then again, apparently it was a lean year:
Other finalists included the founder of Uber, the $62.5bn ride-sharing app that has been met with both resistance and enthusiasm; Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Isis terror cell; Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
Against competition like that, I guess I’d vote for Merkel too.
