Guido

They should have known it from the start. Guido Westerwelle, our current minister of foreign affairs, wasn’t exactly build for the job. Apart from a high rank on the ‘bad clad women’-list two times (and yes, Mr. Westerwelle is a man), he showed a rather undiplomatic character from the very beginning, not answering an English journalist an English question merely because it was a press conference in Germany.

Especially during the last few weeks, our Guido has been through the media in Germany a lot.

It started with his comparison between people on social care (called Hartz IV in Germany) and ‘late Roman decadence’. I don’t know if I just missed something, but I’ve hardly seen one of those on social care spending his/her whole day on a sofa, surrounded by slaves handing them delicatessen from all over the world (which is slightly larger today than it was then). Or are they having an orgy 24/7? What else could he have meant by ‘late Roman decadence’? Hardly living off 350 Euros plus rent (only for a flat of a certain size, otherwise you get nothing). You can’t buy all that many slaves or all that many delicatessen for that little money.

Once this had mostly passed through the media, Guido started it all over again by taking people who founded his election campaign with him on official journeys abroad (as a minister of foreign affairs, not as an individual), on the state’s money, aboard the state’s plane.

Apart from being highly unfortunate as a political decision, his remark about that ‘late Roman decadence’ was not really called for. His department are other countries, not his own. He’s the minister of foreign affairs, not of internal ones.

I’ve never been much of a fan of his party, but if Mr. Westerwelle doesn’t take a lot more care in the future, he might cost them all the hard-earned voters from the last election.