The German public knows me quite well. I have been in their kitchens and living rooms for years.
I was in government for 13 years and in that time only once met the head of the German security services, and that was because he was an old friend. Otherwise, I carefully avoided having anything to do with these people. They are unavoidable but not really necessary.
Germany is one of the medium powers of the world. It is a non-nuclear power. It is in a lower class than the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom and others.
Britain is less European-minded than Greece.
Farmers are always conservative. They stick to what they have learned from their fathers and from their grandfathers. This is the same all over the globe.
In a mass television democracy - which all of us nowadays have - it is impossible to take basic political decisions with long-term consequences without the public knowing it, without the public understanding at least some of it, without the public forming its judgment, heterogeneous as it may be.
