Yesterday, in commenting on the eurozone crisis, Barack Obama said the two words all political scientists hate to see: 

"Europe is wealthy enough that there's no reason why they can't solve this problem," Obama told reporters at the White House.

"If they muster the political will, they have the capacity to settle markets down, make sure that they are acting responsibly and that governments like Italy are able to finance their debt." (emphasis added)

By and large, political scientists hate the concept of political will.  As I've said numerous times on the blog, "political will" is usually tantamount to saying, "if only politicians would completely ignore short-term political incentives and do the right thing!"  Or, to put a finer point on it, "if only politicians stopped acting like politicians!"  Because we as a profession tend to focus on structural forces and immutable preferences, "leadership" as a variable often (though not always) falls by the wayside. 

Looking at the latest EU summit/eurozone machinations, however, I'm beginning to wonder if we need to think about "first image" explanations for what just happened.  As the Wall Street Journal, Felix Salmon, Financial Times, Paul Krugman,  and Economist are all reporting, it was pretty friggin' disastrous.  Salmon provides the most complete autopsy -- here's a snippet: 

[A]nother half-baked solution is exactly what we got. Which means, I fear, that it is now, officially, too late to save the Eur ozone: the collapse of the entire edifice is now not a matter of if but rather of when.

For one thing, fracture is being built into today’s deal: rather than find something acceptable to all 27 members of the European Union, the deal being done is getting negotiated only between the 17 members of the Euro zone. Where does that leave EU members like Britain which don’t use the euro? Out in the cold, with no leverage. If the UK doesn’t want to help save the euro — and, by all accounts, it doesn’t — then that in and of itself makes the task much more difficult.

But that’s just the beginning of the failures we’re seeing from European leaders right now. It seems that German chancellor Angela Merkel is insisting on a fully-fledged treaty change — something there simply isn’t time for, and which the electorates of nearly all European countries would dismiss out of hand. Europe, whatever its other faults, is still a democracy, and it’s clear that any deal is going to be hugely unpopular among most of Europe’s population. There’s simply no chance that a new treaty will get the unanimous ratification it needs, and in the mean time the EU’s crisis-management tools are just not up to dealing with the magnitude of the current crisis.

The fundamental problem is that there isn’t enough money to go around. The current bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is barely big enough to cope with Greece; it doesn’t have a chance of being able to bail out a big economy like Italy or Spain. So it needs to beef up: it needs to be able to borrow money from the one entity which is actually capable of printing money, the European Central Bank.

But the ECB’s president, Mario Draghi, has made it clear that’s not going to happen. Draghi is nominally Italian but in reality one of the stateless European technocratic elite: a former vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs, he’s perfectly comfortable delivering Italy the bad news that he’s not going to lend her the money she needs. He’s very reluctant to lend it directly, he won’t lend it to the EFSF, and he won’t lend it to the IMF. Draghi has his instructions, and he’s sticking to them — even if doing so means the end of the euro zone as we know it.

So, what explains this mess -- the inexorable structural problems of the European Union, or the lack of political leadership?  At this point, I'm genuinely uncertain.  For example, the facile explanation for British Prime Minister David Cameron's rejection of an EU treaty is catering to his domestic interests -- namely the British financial sector.  Then, however, we get to this bit from the Economist: 

After much studied vagueness on his part about Britain's objectives, Mr Cameron's demand came down to a protocol that would ensure Britain would be given a veto on financial-services regulation (see PDF copy here. The British government has become convinced that the European Commission, usually a bastion of liberalism in Europe, has been issuing regulations hostile to the City of London under the influence of its French single-market commissioner, Michel Barnier. And yet strangely, given the accusation that Brussels was taking aim at the heart of the British economy, almost all of the new rules issued so far have been passed with British approval (albeit after much bitter backroom fighting). Tactically, too, it seemed odd to make a stand in defence of the financiers that politicians, both in Britain and across the rest of European, prefer to denounce....

Britain may assume it will benefit from extra business for the City, should the euro zone ever pass a financial-transaction tax. But what if the new club starts imposing financial regulations among the 17 euro-zone members, or the 23 members of the euro-plus pact? That could begin to force euro-denominated transactions into the euro zone, say Paris or Frankfurt. Britain would, surely, have had more influence had the countries of the euro zone remained under an EU-wide system.

As for Merkel, well, my take on her leadership style has been documented already.  She's dealing with an opposition that is castigating her for not taking swifter and more drastic action to resolve the eurocrisis.  In response, she's pushing for changes that will take months, if ever, to accomplish -- and, if they are accomplished, have no guarantee of actually solving the problem.  It doesn't seem like the eurozone has that time. 

As for Draghi, well, one could attribute his range of half-hearted measures to his excessively cautious leadership -- after all the ECB is an ostensibly independent institution, so presumably Dragh has the greatest amount of autonomy.  It's not that simple, however -- Draghi wouldn't have been selected as the new ECB head unless he demonstrated the kind of policy traits that made him acceptable to Germany in the first place.  Oddly enough, although Draghi currently has the most freedom of action, the structures that ensured he would become the new ECB head ensured he would be the least likely person to exploit that freedom. 

So, stepping back, there appears to be a role for the quality of political leadership as an explanatory factor for the current eurozone crisis.  Properly defining that role, however, is beyond the capacity of this blog post. 

What do you think? 

[NOTE:  The following is a public service message from the hard-working team at FP Magazine to the policy wonks and market analysts inside the Beltway--ed.]

Has this happened to you in 2011?  You're stressed out from a long day of reading/writing/number crunching/contingency planning and you're looking to unwind and enjoy yourself.  Then you see the latest announcement of a European summit meeting and proclamations of a breakthrough deal that will resolve the plight of the Greek economy, the fragile state of European banks, and the perilous credit rating of southern Mediterranean countries. 

As you see stocks rise, credit markets soar, and the euro appreciate, the euro-optimism becomes intoxicating.  Pretty soon, the euro-giddiness starts to get to you.  You start to tweet things like, "the corner has been turned," post on Facebook that, "it's time to Europarty!!" and talk up the metric system again.  Nicolas Sarkozy looks like the brilliant progenitor of grand ideas and grand summits, and Angela Merkel is the shrewd politician who made the bankers blink. 

After a few hours or so of this, all the problems in the world look eminently solvable.  In your head, you've devised brilliant, intricate plans that solve the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, the India/Pakistan enduring rivalry, and the BCS college football rankings.  Before you know it, you've organized and presented a talk in which you provide the Mother of All Powerpoint Presentations to Solving Global Problems, charging the entire, catered affair to the Brookings Institution. 

Beware!!  You are a victim of Eurogoggles.  As the Economist will observe, "in the light of day, the holes in the rescue plan are plain to see."  Both AFP and Bloomberg will point out that the policy euphoria has faded the next day.  It will turn out that details are left unexplained.  The size of the bailout package, which looked massive the night before, will prove to be a limp, unsatisfying half-measure the next day.  The bank rescue fund and the Greek deal remain incomplete.  All you'll be left with is that vague sense of self-loathing at having been suckered again, and a strem of angry voice-mail messages from a DC think tank.  The walk of shame to your water-cooler the next day, in which co-workers mock your tweets of the night before, will be humiliating. 

Eurogoggles -- don't let it happen to you or your colleagues. 

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Reuters have stories about Germany's newly announced plan to denuclearize by 2022.  See if you can find the common pattern.  Here's the WSJ: 

Germany's move—marking a contrast with the U.S. and other countries that have largely stuck to plans to continue pursuing nuclear power—is a U-turn from a contentious plan that Ms. Merkel engineered just last fall that would have extended the lifetimes of some of Germany's reactors into the 2030s, more than a decade longer than previously scheduled. Ms. Merkel's latest move is effectively a return to an agreement to phase out nuclear power approved in 2002 by a center-left Social Democrat-Green coalition....

In few countries is nuclear energy the hot-button issue it is in Germany, where polls show some 70% of the populace opposes it, the legacy of a broad-based antinuclear movement that harks back to the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Since the Fukushima accident, antinuclear protests have taken place across the country.

Ms. Merkel's change in course, though, hasn't produced the desired political effect. Conservative allies have been frustrated by her turn away from a cherished policy victory, and nuclear opponents have seen the move as opportunistic. Those perceptions contributed to several stinging regional election losses for the Christian Democratic Union this spring, and have led to a surge in clout for the opposition Green Party.

And now the NYT:

For Mrs. Merkel, the embrace of clean energy represents a transformation based on the politics of the ballot box. Just last year, her center-right coalition forced through an unpopular plan to extend the life of nuclear power plants, with the last to close in 2036. That action inflamed public opinion but the Fukushima disaster politicized it. The nuclear crisis is widely believed to have caused Mrs. Merkel’s party to lose control of the German state of Baden-Württemberg for the first time in 58 years, in a March election that became a referendum on energy policy.

By Monday, Mrs. Merkel said the country must “not let go the chance” to end its dependence on nuclear power.

And, finally, Reuters: 

The German chancellor has, in nine months, gone from touting nuclear plants as a safe "bridge" to renewable energy and extending their lifespan to pushing a nuclear exit strategy that rivals the ambitions of the Social Democrats and Greens.

Merkel had her atomic epiphany after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March, announcing a moratorium on nuclear power and launching an urgent overhaul of German energy policy, resulting in the exit strategy announced on Monday.

Her change of heart, however genuine as it may be, coincides with a string of disastrous election results for her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Free Democrat (FDP) allies that have been partly blamed on her unpopular pro-nuclear policy so far.

With the FDP losing popularity almost as fast as the Greens gain it, and the Greens unseating the CDU in their heartland of Baden-Wuerttemberg in March as well as outpolling them for the first time in Germany in Bremen this month, Merkel has upgraded the nuclear moratorium to a rush for the exit.

Watching Merkel's performance during the myriad euro crises of the past two years, I'm beginning o detect a decision-making algorithm at work.  Let's call it The Merkel Algorithm.  It consists of the following steps:

1)  A problem festers;

2)  Dither and do nothing;

3)  Public opinion polls drop;

4)  Let things fester some more;

5)  Lose an electioon somewhere;

6)  Announce new policy that reverses prior position

7)  Lose even more political support. 

Merkel appears to have brilliantly executed this strategy on both the eurozone and nuclear power.  In all seriousness, what I don't understand is the long periods of dithering and festering.  I get that politicians will sometimes be wrong-footed on policy shocks.  Merkel, however, really does seem to wait until the worst, most cravenly political moment to do something.  Why? 

Your humble blogger hereby calls on all Germany-watchers to offer either an explanation or a more nuanced take on the Merkel Algorithm -- because your humble blogger is good and truly flummoxed.