In 2012 Anne-Marie Slaughter, the first woman to serve as director of policy planning at the State Department, wrote in The Atlantic about why she left that job. “Juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible.”
Her article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” became “one of the most-read pieces in the magazine’s history.”
hinter verschlossenen Türen — behind closed doors. At the cabinet retreat at Meseberg in March 2023, the news agency dpa wrote: Ausgeruhte Gespräche hinter verschlossener Tür scheinen nötig. Rested talks behind a closed door seem necessary.
hinter den Kulissen — behind the scenes. The same report recalled the early days of the coalition, als strittige Themen in erster Linie hinter den Kulissen ausgefochten wurden, when disputed topics were fought out mainly behind the scenes.
in Klausur gehen — to go into closed session. A Klausurtagung is a meeting closed to the public. The word comes from Latin clausura, closure. In German, Klausur also names the part of a monastery that outsiders may not enter.
The Bundestag debates in public. When the parliamentary groups clash over the agenda, the dispute can go to the Ältestenrat, the council of elders. It can meet at once, and the plenary sitting is then interrupted. The Bundestag calls the council der Ort, an dem aufgetretene Streitigkeiten besprochen und geschlichtet werden, the place where disputes that have arisen are discussed and settled.
When it works to bring the groups to agreement, the council is kein Beschlussorgan, not a body that takes decisions. The Bundestag’s rules of procedure state that its sessions follow den Grundsatz der Vertraulichkeit, the principle of confidentiality.
When the parties of a German governing coalition disagree on fundamental questions, they take the dispute to the Koalitionsausschuss, the coalition committee. It is an informal body. The Basic Law does not provide for it. German Wikipedia cites a study arguing that it suits conflict better than the cabinet, because the small group know each other and are verschwiegen, discreet.
In March 2023 the leaders of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP met in the Chancellery from Sunday to Tuesday, for about 30 hours net. Winfried Kretschmann, the Green premier of Baden-Württemberg, said that holding 19-hour sessions was indeed ein Zeichen von Führungsschwäche des Kanzlers, a sign of weak leadership by the chancellor.
Wer bei mir Führung bestellt, muss wissen, dass er sie dann auch bekommt. Whoever orders leadership from me must know that he will then get it. According to the taz, the line dates from 2009, when Olaf Scholz took over the quarreling Hamburg SPD.
In October 2022 Scholz, now chancellor, ended a dispute between the Greens and the FDP over nuclear plants with a formal instruction. The Green member of parliament Irene Mihalic said: Das zeugt nicht von großer Führungsstärke. That does not show great strength of leadership.
In March 2023 the CDU leader Friedrich Merz said that ministers argued auf offener Bühne, on an open stage. Der Bundeskanzler steht daneben und sagt nichts. The chancellor stands next to them and says nothing.
On January 7, 2009, before taking office, Barack Obama said of his BlackBerry, “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” On January 22 the White House press secretary announced: “The President has a BlackBerry, through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff.”
On February 22, 2025, federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject “What did you do last week?” It asked them to reply with about five bullet points on what they had accomplished. The same day Elon Musk wrote on X: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The email itself did not say this. Leaders at several agencies, including the FBI, told staff to wait before replying. Later OPM told agencies that replying was voluntary and that not replying would “not equate to a resignation.”
In a poll for Bild am Sonntag, published in June 2019, the institute Emnid asked 1,009 people to grade the federal government with school grades. The cabinet received an average of 4 plus, 3.8. Only nine percent gave it a gut, good. Nobody gave it a sehr gut. 26 percent failed it.
In 2019 pupils in several German states protested that the mathematics Abitur had been too hard. Some started online petitions. Hamburg’s school authority decided to adjust the marking standard for this special case. The exams would be marked better than originally planned.
In Bavaria, after a petition, the ministry told the state parliament’s education committee that it saw no sign that the marking key needed to change. An official of the ministry said the general tenor was mostly that the exam had been anspruchsvoll, aber machbar, demanding but doable.
In 1987 Björn Engholm was the target of a smear campaign run from the office of his rival Uwe Barschel. Engholm then became minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein and chairman of the Social Democrats. By 1993 he was the favorite to become the party’s candidate for chancellor. Then it came out that he had known about Barschel’s methods earlier than he had said. He had made false statements in the late phase of the Barschel affair. On 3 May 1993 he resigned. A news portal summed it up: Der Verlust seiner Glaubwürdigkeit kostete ihn das Amt, the loss of his credibility cost him the office.