Big, Bad Wulff, by Josef Joffe

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Jose Jofe Big, Bad Wulf Hoover Institution Stanford University

by Jose Joe

January 13, 2012

They were young and attractive, this presidential couple, and the media loved them. Then

Fate took a cruel swipe at the First Husband. He had taken advantage, he was not telling

the whole truth, and the press was going to beat it out o him. He would go down in an

orgy o recrimination and selrighteousness.

Bill Clinton? Yes, but also German President Christian Wul, a head o state with largely

ceremonial unctions, who has been under re since last month about a personal loan he

tried to hide rom the public when he was a state governor.

The parallels should not be taken too ar. In Mr. Clintons case, the constitutional process

quickly took over. The president was impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate.

The comeback was sweet: Mr. Clinton let the White House with the highest endoofce

approval ratings o any U.S. president since World War II.

Mr. Wul aces a very dierent threat as he dances back and orth between public

apologies and legal maneuvers. The Bundestag isnt even talking about impeachment,

on which the Constitutional Court would have to rule. Angela Merkel, a ellow Christian

Democrat, is standing by him. Public opinion is on Mr. Wuls side, but the dont resign

majority is shrinking.

The real menace to Mr. Wuls political uture comes, instead, rom the press. The

presidents trial is unolding strictly in the court o published opinion. It is trial by media.

Opinion about Mr. Clintons scandal divided along the usual letright lines, both in the

press and in Congress. But in laaire Wul, the rightish Welt and the letish Sddeutsche

Zeitung are suddenly in bed together, and the rest have piled in, whatever their

ideological enmities. The Wul (orgive the pun) is being hounded by the whole pack:

a kind o national unity government o and by the media. This is the news behind the

newsbizarre and worrisome at once.

What has the man done? He is not accused o dispatching minions to ransack the

headquarters o the opposition party. Nor did he use the powers o his ofce to obstruct

justice. Mr. Wul is no Bill Clinton, in whose case the acts provided ample reason or a

perjury indictment.

By contrast, Christian Wuls alleged high crimes and misdemeanors are o the petty

kind. They date back to his days in Hanover as prime minister o Lower Saxony. To

A W A L L S T R E E T J O U R N A L O P- E D

Big, Bad Wulf


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Jose Jofe Big, Bad Wulf 2 Hoover Institution Stanord University

understand the local politics, think o Chicago in the good old days. Think about the

grat, avoritism and mutual backscratching that made the Windy City amous, then

shrink it down to scale: Hanover is just onetenth the size o Chicago.

When Mr. Wul emerged rom an expensive divorce and went looking or a new

house in 2008, he hit up a riendly couple, Egon and Edith Geerkens, or a loan o

500,000. He told the state parliament in February 2010 that he had no business

relations with Mr. Geerkens, a wealthy entrepreneur, and that the loan was extended

by the missus.

But Mrs. Geerkens reportedly had no money o her own at the time. And why was

the transaction handled by a Swiss bank where Mr. Geerkens had stashed some o

his cash? The hounds started snifng. So in March 2010, Mr. Wul moved the loan to

BW Bank, a subsidiary o the staterun Landesbank o BadenWrttemberg, which

granted him a very avorable interest rate.

The plot thickens. BW also happens to be the house bank o Porsche. Both the car

maker and perhaps the bank were saved by Volkswagen, headquartered in Mr. Wuls

bailiwick o Lower Saxony. Mr. Wul also served on the Volkswagen board while he

was prime minister. The sleuths concluded that the cheap BW loan was a reward or

past avors.

The stage widened ater Mr. Wul was elected president last June. When the scandal

broke out last month, the searchlight was cast back to the original loan rom the

Geerkens. Mr. Wul was accused o deceiving the state parliament in Lower Saxony.

You get the idea. It is a tale about who did what, when. It is about inerence and

innuendo. It is the oldest story since Adam and Eve: He said, she said. It is also about

lowly stu, like vacationing at the houses o rich riends. Though the daily reporting

lls a small library by now, even a ruthless bloodhound like Eliot Spitzer, the ormer

attorney general o New York, would have a hard time winning a conviction. But that

is not the purpose.

The point is to wear Mr. Wul downto make him buckle and resign. The medias

traditional task is to probe, unearth and publishto act as a watchdog against

government. It is not supposed to replace the third branch as prosecutor, judge and

jury rolled into one. Nor are the media an ersatz church, complete with a laptop

packing priesthood acting as Grand Inquisitor and canonical authority laying down

the moral law.

In the court o the press, there is no procedural protection, no impartial judge, no

Fith Amendment proscribing selincrimination. There isnt even a deense counsel


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Jose Jofe Big, Bad Wulf 3 Hoover Institution Stanord University

About the Author

Jose Jofe, the Marc and

Anita Abramowitz Fellow in

International Relations at the

Hoover Institution, is publisher-

editor o the German weekly

Die Zeit.

His areas o interest are U.S.

oreign policy, international

security policy, European-

American relations, Europe and

Germany, and the Middle East.

His essays and reviews haveappeared in the New York

Review o Books, Times Literary

Supplement, Commentary,

New York Times Magazine, New

Republic, Weekly Standard,

Newsweek, Time, and Prospect

(London).

not when the rightleaning press, theoretically Mr. Wuls natural ally, runs with the

rest o the pack.

There isnt enough to convict? It doesnt matter: Well question his character and

morals. I that doesnt work, well declare him unt or the presidency. He just isnt up

to it. Then well accuse him o damaging his high ofce. Still a miss? Well get him or

his shoddy crisis management: Either he has too much nerve, in insisting that he will

stay, or he has too little sangroid. Exhibit A is a meandering message that Mr. Wul

let on the answering machine o the editor o Bild Zeitung, alternating between

nasty threats and whiny pleading. Bild is the mighty masscirculation tabloid that

once hyped Mr. Wul to high heaven and now leads the charge o the hounds.

You cant win, goes the medias merciless message. We are the power. But who will

guard against the guardians when selpolicing and proessional responsibility ail?

With his misdeeds, Mr. Wul may not be your ideal soninlaw. But he, like everybody,

deserves due process. Trial by media is not just distasteul. It is a threat to the

procedures o liberal democracyindeed, to the system itsel.

Reprinted by permission o the Wall Street Journal. 2011 Dow Jones & Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Big, Bad Wulff, by Josef Joffe