Steinbrück’s Failings: The Flawed Campaign of Merkel’s Rival. Chancellor Candidate Gives Middle Finger!

Peer Steinbrück, the Social Democratic chancellor candidate, is everything Angela Merkel isn’t: He’s cheeky and brash and he can’t resist a joke. It’s entertaining, but it can’t mask what has been a poorly-run campaign that will likely end in failure. A decade from now when, or rather if, Germans look back on Peer Steinbrück’s 2013 campaign to oust Angela Merkel, most of them are likely to remember only one thing — a photo of him showing his middle finger. Wähl doch! Augstein oder Blome Jeden Freitag prallen Welten und Weltanschauungen aufeinander, wenn Jakob Augstein (der Freitag) und Nikolaus Blome (Bild) die Geschehnisse der Woche reflektieren!

As Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper writes on its website on Thursday, if you did this on the street and someone decided to rat you out to the police, you could get a €600 ($800) to €4,000 fine for giving someone the bird. So why is Peer Steinbrück, the opposition Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) candidate for chancellor, and the only person one could seriously describe as a challenger to Angela Merkel, seen on the front page of the paper’s weekly magazine showing his middle finger?