CHURCHILL COULD HAVE TOLD HIM THEY'RE NEVER MIDDLING (via Pepys):

Angela Merkel's Germany (Jim Geraght, April 7, 2006, Washington Times)

Seven months ago in these pages, I wrote that Angela Merkel, then the Christian Democrat candidate in Germany's elections, had not "strained any muscles riding to the rescue of America's reputation" and that she had earned her label as "a letdown." I predicted her assumption to the position of chancellor would constitute only a "moderate improvement" in U.S.-German relations.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximum dummkopf.

After about five months in office Chancellor Merkel's style has gone from frumpy to feisty, and her rhetoric in office, from an American perspective, has been downright dreamy. [...]

To call Mrs. Merkel a breath of fresh air is an understatement. Addressing German legislators on March 29, she shocked Berlin's staid foreign-policy establishment with a stirring address outlining a tough-minded determination to stand up for German principles abroad.

She cited the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity who faced the death penalty. (Rahman is now safely in Italy.) Mrs. Merkel was among those applying the most diplomatic pressure on the Afghan regime, along with officials in the United States and Italy. Mrs. Merkel declared it "appalling" and was among the first to telephone Afghan president Hamid Karzai and twist some arms diplomatically.

Regarding Iran's nuclear program, Mrs. Merkel has taken a much tougher line than her predecessor. She compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler. [...]

Perhaps most strikingly, Mrs. Merkel ripped into a widespread and disingenuous perspective among German political elites, who loudly call for thorny international crises to be referred to the United Nations, knowing that in all likelihood the United Nations will do nothing. This is strong stuff for European politics, where a joke about President George W. Bush always gets a laugh and vapid pledges for "multilateralism" or "multipolarity" garner rote applause.