Thus Der Spiegel today. “The candidates for president of the European Commission have run campaigns aimed at personalizing EU politics and boosting the democratic legitimacy of the post,” explains the newspaper. “But try as they might, public interest in the European elections remains tepid.” Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz are running for the office of president of the European Commission. They are fifty-nine and fifty-eight, respectively. Juncker heads the center-right European People’s Party, and Schulz is the chief of the Party of European Socialists. Their campaigns have skirted eurosceptic countries, and most notably Britain, but they are still incapable of drumming up any sort of enthusiasm among the electorate. A few days before the election day, not too many people across the European Union have even heard of the twain. “On the face of it,” concludes the article, “this exercise in European democracy seems to have failed.” Well put. But the long-term implications of this failure are left to the reader’s imagination. The Commission and the Union are heading nowhere fast, that is. Brussels is sidelined by Berlin. And Angela Merkel is already the president of Europe, whatever its boundaries. By the way, the article does actually mention that she is quite unimpressed by either of the candidates.