Dear Reader,
Friedrich Merz, when still leader of the opposition, once coined a stinging epithet for the then chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz, he said, was a Klempner der Macht — a plumber of power: a man adept at fixing leaks, but incapable of designing a better system.
The label stuck. But if Scholz was the diminutive Mario, Merz is proving to be his lan…