Opinion | Friedrich Merz, Germanys Next Chancellor, Is Yesterdays Man

Friedrich Merz didn’t waste time.Having led his party, the Christian Democrats, to first place in Germany’s election last month, Mr.Merz swiftly assumed the mantle of chancellor-in-waiting.

He urged the country to move quickly to address the challenges, both domestic and foreign, that threaten to overwhelm it.“The world,” he said, “is not waiting for us.”He’s not wrong.

Germany needs to get its act together, fast.The far-right Alternative for Germany, exploiting a shrinking economy and a widespread sense of malaise, came in second, winning 20 percent of the vote.

The extreme right is now the strongest it has been since the end of World War II.President Trump’s rapprochement with Russia and castigation of Europe, meanwhile, threatens to upend the international order and Germany’s place in it.

In the face of both tests, the country must at once renew and reorient itself.The task calls for a leader with a fresh vision of the future.Unfortunately, that’s not Mr.

Merz.Committed to tax breaks for the wealthy, harsh restrictions for migrants and cuts for welfare recipients, he is a throwback figure.

His program amounts to an effort to turn back the clock to a time when the country could depend on cheap energy and plentiful exports to propel it on the world stage.Today, Germany is in urgent need of change.

Instead it’s getting Mr.Merz: yesterday’s man, with yesterday’s ideas.Born in 1955, Mr.

Merz grew up in a Catholic family in the Sauerland, a staunchly conservative region in western Germany.As a teenager, he thought the ’68 generation of leftist activists were “crazy.” He worried, too, that the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany would make it into Parliament.

By the time he joined the Christian Democrats’ youth organization at age 17, it was clear politics was his future.In 1989, after law school and a spell in the profession, he was elected to the European Parliament; five years later, he sat in the German Parliamen...