In a nationally televised debate on Feb. 9, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) displayed pluck and conviction. On the campaign trail, Scholz’s pugnacity—not a characteristic that Germans know from his three-year chancellorship—has enabled him to score points against opponent Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) candidate. But though most observers judged Scholz the debate’s narrow victor, this kind of win isn’t anything near enough for his left-of-center party to catch up to Merz’s conservatives before election day on Feb. 23. The CDU leads the Social Democrats by nearly double digits, and the leftists also lag behind the far-right Alternative for Germany.

Nevertheless, the Social Democrats are the conservatives’ most likely coalition partner and will probably join their rivals in government under Merz. Since Scholz has said that he won’t play second fiddle after serving as chancellor himself, his political career—at least in electoral politics—will most probably come to an end next week, with a whimper rather than a bang.

In a nationally televised debate on Feb. 9, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) displayed pluck and conviction. On the campaign trail, Scholz’s pugnacity—not a characteristic that Germans know from his three-year chancellorship—has enabled him to score points against opponent Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) candidate. But though most observers judged Scholz the debate’s narrow victor, this kind of win isn’t anything near enough for his left-of-center party to catch up to Merz’s conservatives before election day on Feb. 23. The CDU leads the Social Democrats by nearly double digits, and the leftists also lag behind the far-right Alternative for Germany.

Nevertheless, the Social Democrats are the conservatives’ most likely coalition partner and will probably join their rivals in government under Merz. Since Scholz has said that he won’t play second fiddle after serving as chancellor himself, his political career—at least in electoral politics—will most probably come to an end next week, with a whimper rather than a bang.

This is a disappointing finale for the career politician who joined the party of former Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1975 at the age of 17. With a curly red mop, the son of a textile worker rose in the SPD’s ranks as a firebrand dedicated to socialist policies and nuclear disarmament. By the late 1990s, he had modified his politics and joined the Bundestag, where he steadily crept up the party hierarchy, eventually becoming a cabinet secretary and the vice chancellor—in governments led by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel—as well as SPD chief and the mayor of the northern city of Hamburg.

Scholz, photographed in Berlin circa 2002.Ullstein Bild archive/via Getty Images

In 2021, after four Merkel terms, Scholz bested the CDU’s reliable electoral machine with the help of an unexpectedly hapless conservative adversary, Armin Laschet. Scholz had cultivated a reputation as a constructive, sober moderate, campaigning on a........

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