Planblog

It’s not easy to get excited about German politics these days. In fact, most Germans I talk to have grown pretty frustrated over the years with the way politics is organized.

By and large, the political parties lack agility and drive, their platforms don’t seem to grasp the big picture challenges the country is facing and their personnel is either exhausted or lacks credibility (or both). There are no stars around anymore, and I dare you to try to remember the last time a political idea, concept or proposal made you go “wow!”

So, what if you were to re-engineer a political party in Germany today? Here’s a quick sketch, probably highly flawed, of five principles that I believe could make almost any party fairly popular within a few years.

A market with so many unhappy customers will be a huge opportunity for whoever manages to figure out how to do things differently, politically speaking.

Just sayin’…

20 years ago I entered the US for the first time. John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, traveling TWA, on my way to California. I would spend the 1989/90 school year as a foreign exchange student in the San Francisco Bay Area, by far one of the best things I’ve ever done.