Nowadays it has to be English. If you host a one-hour talk show on the Second German Television or if you represent a conservatism with a full-bearded face in this show as chairman of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, then you have to drop at least one English word as a sign that you have an eye on the world and that you are in control of the situation. A whole English quote would probably be too much – the proverb or bon mot would give the erroneous impression that one only deals with one's own elitist bubble. Even an ordinary English phrase, a chain of words without a dictionary of quotations, would probably be counterproductive, sounding as if it had been memorized. But a single English word, carefully and at the same time casually placed, is the signature of a cosmopolitanism tuned to the standards of television.

Patrick Bahners

Feuilleton correspondent in Cologne and responsible for "Humanities".

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The hour of unproductive exchange on the subject of "Traffic light in the asylum dispute – more money, fewer refugees?" had almost passed when Maybrit Illner took the opportunity to classify some point of the compromise between the Federal Chancellor and the Conference of Minister-Presidents, which had come about with great effort, but in retrospect was almost self-evident, as a "good move". With this vocabulary, the presenter relegated the topic of the show to the competence of game theory, the prevailing view of political dispute in political journalism, which sorts the confusion of expressions of will and accusations of unwillingness according to the standard of the strategic advantage of the actors.

The respect for finesse remained blanket

Now it is by no means irrelevant to address party politicians as chess or straw players. But then you also have to analyze their moves, with a sense and respect for tactical finesse. Illner's phrase of the "good move" expressed this respect only in a sweeping form and thus only apparently. She gave the rulers a certificate of professionalism, how to get bonus points for every purchase in the supermarket, as an invitation to come back. The veteran of capital journalism in the curious mode of the controlled question-and-answer game demonstrated her own professional understanding of roles by wiping out the board on which a new irritating topic will be put up for debate in two weeks.

The format of the political talk show thrives on the invocation of the crisis, otherwise it would not be able to single out a single one of all the topics negotiated in politics at the same time. Government action is therefore questioned as to whether it makes a government crisis more likely. The public communication within the traffic light coalition, in which the representatives of the FDP in particular constantly reaffirm positions that seem to mark predetermined breaking points of the alliance, shows where the deformation of the habitus of professional politics by talk show routine has led. It is risky that there is no moderator in a coalition who looks at the studio clock and returns the crisis discourse to normality just in time by awarding a recognition bonus for a "good move".

Is the coalition putting itself in danger in asylum policy by the unity it has to show in order to achieve something in the agreement between the federal and state governments? This question was not a bad choice for such a show. Consensus is explosive: that's how paradoxical it is in politics. However, the investigation of the government's internal tension did not go beyond the finding that the Greens and SPD are now considering measures of deterrent outsourcing of the processing of asylum applications, which they had rejected when the Federal Minister of the Interior was called Horst Seehofer. The encumbered provenance served implicitly as a guarantee of correctness: If you have to fall back on Seehofer's ideas, there are apparently really no alternatives.