David McWilliams is one of the best columnists working in Irish journalism (admittedly the competition isn’t that intense). In today’s Sunday Business Post, he examines the reasons behind the potentially worrying rise in Germany of the Linkspartei, the ramshackle populist coalition led by the former head of the East German Communists Gregor Gysi and Chancellor Schr�der’s former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine. (Lafontaine’s putative hard-left principles hasn’t prevented him from penning a lucrative column for the right-wing tabloid Bild.)In a short amount of space, McWilliams ties together the emergence of this organization, the tradition of anti-Americanism in Germany, the rise of China, and the impact of globalization. Although I don’t think developments are as worrying as McWilliams suggests (a possible Fourth Reich??), the argument is worth reading.For what it’s worth, I think Gerhard Schr�der might just stay Chancellor after the next election. He’s more personally popular than his rival Angela Merkel and he’s making a comeback in the polls. The growth of the Linkspartei and the lead held by the Christian Democrats allows him to position the SPD in the middle, as the sane alternative to the bash-the-foreigners Commies and the Thatcherite policies (which aren’t really) espoused by Merkel. The German electorate is said to be nervous this year–perhaps they’ll give the devil they know another chance.