What‘s Wissing‘s game here?
I don’t like the guy, but he’s politically-tactically not a fool
Is this positioning for a post-Lindner shot at leading the FDP? (Party sinks below 5%, needs a refresh) Or is it a rat leaving the sinking ship, but a few more months as Minister appeals?
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/wissing-austritt-fdp-100.html
@jon
My take is that he's essentially confirming Scholz' version of how things went down.
Remember that he was way more open to changes to the transport sector in the beginning of the coalition and only stopped doing that after being fenced in by Lindner?
My guess with his RLP background is that he's almost as fed up with Lindner as everyone outside FDP is.
Strategically, I think it's a rather smart move: Lindner may win his gamble and have the FDP at just over 5%, but he may well not. And if he plans to rejoin FDP (as he hinted: he leaves the party in order to protect it from his personal decision to put country above party) he's got statesman appeal and may look like a credible alternative to Lindner's camp.
And yeah, he can always become Aufsichtsratschef at Toll Collect, Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa or even Volkswagen (he seems to have a thing for sinking ships 🤭).
@jon
Alright: I was totally wrong (but so were you 😅)
Wissing is very religious, a Calvinist. This article from 2022 in Zeit is very revealing: his core belief No. 1 is that you simply cannot make someone change their behaviour because they're free.
Yet, he's a devoted person, so continuing your office as minister above party lines is kind of logical. It's work ethics, basically.
https://www.zeit.de/2022/28/volker-wissing-fdp-verkehrsminister-kirche/komplettansicht
@jon
By the way: I find this article pretty revealing both for liberals and for liberal media on how they fail at addressing cognitive dissonance. Check out the last paragraph: he clearly analyses what's at stake yet cannot overcome his conviction. And the journalist who wrote this piece doesn't seem to feel the need to insist. It's just left there for anyone to judge on their own.