Germany's president has resigned. It was the correct decision, because he failed as a role model. Instead of answering honestly the allegations against him, he used every trick in the book to hide things. The next president will have to be far better, and Chancellor Merkel will have no choice but to find a joint candidate with the opposition.

German President Christian Wulff's resignation is "good for
the political culture and for democracy". Photo: dapd.

The most dim-witted political idea to come about in recent years was to make Christian Wulff Germany's president. The conservative Christian Democrats, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party and Chancellor Angela Merkel sought out this candidate -- and now they are jointly responsible for his failure. There could have been a better candidate, everyone knew that. But Merkel, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and their party strategists had considered just about everything when making this choice -- everything, that is, with the exception of what was good for the country.

Now Wulff is gone, and all sides have been damaged: the office of the president, Merkel and her coalition government, not to mention the overall image of politics. And that's a shame.

Compassion isn't really a category that goes along with politics, but Christian Wulff deserves it nonetheless. His fall is unprecedented in the history of the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. Just hours ago, he was the head of state, and red carpets were rolled out for him. Now he is facing the abyss, even having to fear he might have to forfeit the annual remuneration of €199,000 ($262,000) paid to former German presidents after they leave office. When he says that he is "wounded," he's surely being honest.

Of course, it was Wulff himself who made a mess of things. The image will remain of a man who wanted to be great but was ultimately too small for the office he was elected to. In the end, it was his mediocrity that proved fatal. It is irrelevant whether he always acted in a legally correct way in his offices, as he stated in his resignation speech on Friday. His failure came in the way in which he dealt with the endless stream of small and serious allegations against him.