By Theo Sommer

It is a curious phenomenon: While German Chancellor Angela Merkel sports sky-high approval ratings, 70 percent or more in recent polls, the punditariat is waxing increasingly critical of her performance.

Commentators bemoan her "feel-good rhetoric," her habit of ducking all the difficult issues, her proclivity toward "the soft stuff" like climate control, her tendency to meekly say okay rather than forcefully lead. "Attentism" - remaining out of the fray - is the essence of her political style, argues Der Spiegel; she hopes to get through to the 2009 elections in "half-hibernation," says John Vinocur of the International Herald Tribune. The image of a reformist Maggie Merkel rescuing Germany from its torpor has been replaced by that of the rollback chancellor, stalling on reform and ruling by poll. Newsweek splashed the picture of a tired and pensive Angela Merkel across its title page. "Lost Leader" proclaimed the harsh headline.

Her Social Democratic coalition partners have also taken the gloves off. Andrea Nahles, newly elected vice chair of the SPD, called her a "great crested grebe" - a water bird fishing deep under the surface but never above the water "where a branch can fall on your head." As Nahles is the spokeswoman of the Social Democratic left, the chancellor need not lose too much sleep over such malicious pinpricks. More worrisome is the fact that her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, publicly attacked her at last month's SPD congress because she received the Dalai Lama in the Chancellery, thereby provoking Beijing's wrath - he called it "window-dressing policy for the quick headline at home."

During her first two years in office, Chancellor Merkel was lucky on two counts. First: the coalition partners shared a reservoir of common purposes. They passed an impressive tax reform benefiting both individuals and corporations; they raised the pension age from 65 to 67; they did away with a slew of subsidies; and they introduced new family entitlements. Second: Traveling around the globe, Merkel impressed not only her far-flung interlocutors but also the German public.

All this has changed. The reservoir of commonality is exhausted in the coalition and foreign policy will no longer provide the chancellor an excuse for domestic attentism. From now on, Angela Merkel will have to take a stand on the issues she has skirted so far.

No one should be surprised if she does not stand on the neo-liberal platform on which she ran - and almost lost - in 2005. Recent surveys made it quite clear that Germans are not against reforms per se but they loathe inequitable reforms. They want to preserve their "Rhenish capitalism," as Germany's social market economy has come to be known. This goes even for the overwhelming majority of Christian Democratic voters. Social justice, they agree, must not be left to the vagaries and brutalities of the market. Any leader neglecting this fundamental fact of German politics would indeed be a lost leader.

Nor should anyone be surprised if the Grand Coalition between Conservatives and Social Democrats fails to produce any more world-shaking reforms during the next 24 months. The election campaign has begun. Partners will increasingly morph into adversaries.