How to Change Without a Revolution

It takes an absent (or very subtle) collective mind to deliver an electoral verdict like the German one. At the polls on Sept. 18, the people's message was that nobody wins. It is tempting to compare Germany '05 with the U.S. presidential election in Florida five years ago, but wrong. In Florida, after much counting and recounting, somebody wonGeorge W. Bush. Yet in Germany, Gerhard Schrder, the Social Democrat, was trouncedand so was Angela Merkel, his Christian-Democratic challenger. The Chancellor and his junior partner, the Greens, lost their majority, but Frau Merkel and her allies, the Free Democrats (FDP), did not...