In the political landscape of the blind ...

Out of the five continents on this planet, I would dare say that the European one houses the population which is most involved in state politics, even if ever rising numbers of people consciously opt to disengage from anything to do with politicians.

This will have to do with literacy, transparency, democracy, infrastructure but also, or perhaps above all, with geography and history.  Simply a lot of people per square kilometer inevitably debating where one person's freedom ends and another's commences and there with in a constant quest for some form of civilized arbitrage.

The reason we acknowledge with a reasonable peace of mind why present Germany's leading politicians have the influence they do is because today Europe finds itself in a fairly unique mix of modernity and tradition wherein - for the first time in history - a generally informed civilian society is visibly outpacing it's national governors.  

It does not really matter whether we are revolted, annoyed or indifferent with what politicians say or even undertake.  We have become accustomed to enormous amounts of EU top meetings, some more urgent than others, and no one is really objecting the fact that whomever represents more private economic activity or individuals, whichever their national origins, has a higher claim in the decision making especially if we evaluate the very relative significance in a wider world.

The times wherein military uniformed personalities would manage to head or lead large populations into some sort of common belief or hatred appear to have long gone.  I recall a German columnist writing more than a year ago that the only reasons why Europe had not entered into another war were due to that (1) countries do not have the necessary finance and (2) even if they would have, political leaders would not be able to find a sufficient number of young men interested or willing to pick up an uniform and arms and start shooting on their neighbors.

Angela Merkel may very well classify as the most (politically) powerful woman in the world today. And ?  That would probably say more of the population that allow her to act as representative in international gatherings than the personality itself, notwithstanding the typical skills necessary to function within a profession, but then again, as already mentioned, we ordinary civilians tend to be looking in other directions to secure the interests of our immediate surroundings and I will atribute Mutti the benefit of the doubt that has been her intention all along (see a previous post on mastering morality).