Slick. The FDP def­i­nite­ly know how to do an event like that. A bit corny at some points maybe, but with an at­ten­tion to de­tail that makes it look and feel like Wester­welle is of pres­i­den­tial pro­por­tions. Ar­rows on the Wester­welle signs in the hood point­ing in the right di­rec­tion. Se­cu­ri­ty that af­ter the event re­mem­bers what items be­long to you. Hosts giv­ing up their seats for guests. Those aren't things you can just slap on any event, that's a men­tal­i­ty that's part of the FDP. They want to get things right, they man­age to get things right and that is prob­a­bly how they will run the coun­try.

A bit odd to sud­den­ly see Rolf Salo as MC in the classy Cu­rio-Haus af­ter only meet­ing him at some night­ly torch-lit grill-event in a dark Stad­park. But it all fits in the democ­ra­cy thing that start­ed mod­est­ly in Lu­rup.

Talk­ing about epic. When Wester­welle en­ters the room it's al­most like he's wear­ing a box­ing robe and gloves. From the back of the room packed with peo­ple he walks with his en­tourage through a nar­row cor­ri­dor through the au­di­ence to the stage while Don't Stop plays through the speak­ers. That to­tal­ly out­class­es Scholz and Wow­ere­it. Go­ing for the track Clin­ton al­ready used back in 1992 wouldn't be my choice, but ap­par­ent­ly Wester­welle is over forty, and it's prob­a­bly the safest choice to make. And Eye of the Tiger would be a bit over the top.

On stage Wester­welle is pro­fes­sion­al. Maybe I've been to much into the com­mu­ni­ca­tion thing to ap­pre­ci­ate it as the gen­er­al au­di­ence would. I see the prod­uct Wester­welle and not the per­son. But the prod­uct is per­fect, maybe with the speech writ­ten by a team of pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers, in clothes picked by pro­fes­sion­al styl­ists on a stage styled by pro­fes­sion­al styl­ists, de­liv­ered in a way made only pos­si­ble af­ter lots of train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence. So what I also see is that there is a team be­hind Wester­welle, which isn't al­ways pos­si­ble if the fo­cus is on the per­son. The FDP is an or­ga­ni­za­tion with a clear di­rec­tion, and not like the SPD where every hot­shot has his own agen­da and opin­ion about what coali­tion part­ner they might be aim­ing for.

The al­most bor­ing thing about the FDP is that they most­ly tell me what I al­ready know. Like what's the point of shut­ting down a rel­a­tive­ly safe Ger­man nu­clear re­ac­tor and then in­stead im­port elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by a rel­a­tive­ly un­safe nu­clear re­ac­tor some­where in Ver­weg­gis­tan? That if you're mak­ing mil­lions you're not ea­ger­ly await­ing what school sys­tem the Ger­man gov­ern­ment has in mind for your kids. But at least they tell those things in an ef­fi­cient and en­ter­tain­ing way. More ef­fi­cient and en­ter­tain­ing than I do here any­way.