Well, there's the problem with our type of democracy.
It boils down to a popularity contest instead of a competence one, so politicians will do or say whatever gets them re-elected instead of what's good for the long term being of the country/voters/society.
Much like the focus on the "next quarter" of CEOs, that ends up ruining companies long term at the expense of quick profits short term, politicians in the west focus only on the "next election" instead of major issues like housing, education, pensions, demographics, infrastructure, defense, immigration, all of which require long term planning to get right but nobody cares as they just keep kicking the can down the road and hope they won't be in the office by the time shit really hits the fan. And when the shit does eventually hit the fan, whoever will be in office will just blame the predecessors for knowing X was unsustainable and not having done anything about it. Rinse and repeat.
Solutions to short-termism are very welcome, but more often than not they tend to boil down to "someone stays in power for decades", which is not really desirable, is it?
Which is super ironic as Merkel has been in power since forever, well, 15 years to be exact, but still, way longer than most other EU or western governments.
It's not great but at least it's better than public opinion having 0 effect on policy.
Merkel would have governed against the strong will of the Germans to get rid of nuclear ASAP.
This topic has been intensely discussed in Germany for two decades already.
That was not a sustainable position. Mass protests would have awaited the government.
Her changing positions got a 10 point bump. It’s a large group for sure, but it’s still just placating dimwits to gain quick political support to stay in power. The vast majority clearly didn’t care.
Only shows your lack of respect for the voters.
> The vast majority clearly didn’t care.
The vast majority did care. It was one of the hottest and longest debated politics topics.
Merkel knew everything about it, since she was before the responsible minister.
Lack of respect specifically for 10 percent of the voters who changed their view of a politician to a positive based solely on her caving into populist pressure to adopt a bad energy policy.
People are too ignorant to decide in any form of direct democracy how safe nuclear is. These dimwits chose to accelerate climate change (a well-known acute global problem) over nuclear power because “nuclear is scary” and didn’t support Merkel until she agreed. Despicable.
> The vast majority did care. It was one of the hottest and longest debated politics topics
Nope. The 10 point change showed how little it mattered. “Hottest political topics” just means people interested in national politics. It’s still irrelevant to the majority.