Unfortunately her doctorate hasn't prevented her from making one inane decision after the other during the ongoing financial crisis and even on the field she should be at least somewhat knowledgeable (nuclear power) she didn't really evoke any trust into her decision-making (first extending life span of nuclear reactors despite strong criticism by experts and than retracting this decision only a year later in the wake of Fukushima).
Merkel's decision are not so 'inane'. If you look at the German situation (and that's her main job), it is looking pretty good right now.
She is also not only 'somewhat knowledgeable' about nuclear power, she was the responsible minister for several years.
Extending the life span was a political decision - especially moved ahead by her coalition partner - the FDP. Before Fukushima there was a majority of conservatives and liberals against the nuclear exit. This changed with Fukushima.
Merkel often bases her decisions on what is politically possible in Germany. She believes in a politics of small steps which, where the outcome can be verified and one can adapt then. A very scientific approach.
"If you look at the German situation (and that's her main job), it is looking pretty good right now."
I am a German and the outside perspective is unfortunately somewhat misrepresenting our situation here. As far as I can tell most foreign news sources tell about our unemployment rate and our GDP growth but both come with strings attached.
First of all our unemployment rate does not reflect the true unemployment in any rate due to changing the definition what constitutes an unemployed person. For instance, jobless people over 58, people being forced to do work-fare, people doing mandated education and a couple of other cases are not counted as unemployed although this people live off social welfare. A rapidly expanding part of the work force is also counted among the working poor, i.e. they don't earn enough and have to be subsided by the state. A lot of once full-time positions are transformed into part-time jobs which makes it increasingly difficult for people to make ends meet and leave them susceptible to poverty when becoming old since our pension scheme is mostly based on your work years and your income.
Most of the (slow) GDP growth is attributed to export while our domestic consumption is either stagnating or declining because Germans had in the last 20 years stagnating or declining real wages. So we have growth but the majority does not profit from it in any way.
"Extending the life span was a political decision"
What else? It was just to show that expertise in the respective field has nothing to do with competent decision making. The problems with nuclear power (extremely dangerous in a densely populated country as Germany, no means to store nuclear waste long-term, extremely expensive, etc.).
There is an international standard definition to count unemployed people.
There is no 'true unemployment'. There are several different definitions. By all definitions the unemployment in Germany is at a very low level compared to recent years.
Which really doesn't show, ever. I think being a scientist (and by contrast, a politician) is a matter of thinking, not of degree or title. The currently top rated comment [1] explains it rather nicely.
