The chaotic fallout from Sunday's general elections in Germany was quickly sized-up by much of the foreign press as material fitting for a couple days' worth of stories and a few digs at Germany's expense. The German media, on the other hand, seems determined to wring from the fiasco a five act-drama. And, based on a scan of today's papers, German pundits have decided that it's time to bring to a conclusion the lamentations of Act One -- immediately after the election, paroxysms of hysteria and self-flagellation were the order of the day -- and move briskly, without intermission, into the sober analysis of Act Two.

There's certainly plenty to analyze. Germany still knows neither what it's next governing coalition might look like, who its next chancellor might be, nor whether there will even be a next government based on Sunday's elections. There is still the possibility that new, new elections will be called. But, one unanswered question has risen above all others: How did Angela Merkel manage to blow it so badly?

While pundits turn out to provide an array of answers, no one doubts that it's a perfectly valid question. Indeed, many had assumed the vote would be little more than a coronation of Merkel. From the time that Chancellor Schröder called for early elections, her Christian Democratic Union enjoyed a substantial lead in the polls against the Social Democrats. No one anticipated that Merkel could lose the 20 point lead that she had been handed -- until the results came in, that is. So, what went wrong?

The influential weekly Die Zeit first considers -- and dismisses -- the most obvious explanations. It would be much too cynical, claims the writer, to say that Merkel was doomed by her "relative honesty" about her political intentions -- her refusal, for example, to sugar-coat uncomfortable policies, like the raising of Germany's sales tax. After all, the article points out, honest campaigning is the basis of a democratically received mandate. It would be just as cynical to tack the defeat to the fact that she's a woman: If anything, the election signalled the "the furious end of political machismo a la Schröder and Fischer", who were unable to "secure a lasting political mandate for their reform agenda."

Rather, the writer argues, the disaster is explained by a central paradox of the Christian Democrats' strategy: They decided to rest their entire campaign on economic reforms that, even in the milder forms pursued by Schröder, never struck the voters' fancy. Merkel's campaign ran out of steam because other than economic competence she didn't promise anything substantial. She had, the paper argues "no philosophy, no clear enemies, no security, no charisma." All in all, she over-estimated the electorate's readiness for change and didn't seriously enough consider their fears.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung largely concurs: The CDU set up their own defeat by ditching everything other than business-friendly market-oriented economics. Gerhard Schröder lost the country's confidence precisely because his economic reforms were seen as having gone too far; Merkel's plans to intensify the reforms were a folly. Or, according to the incredulous writer's metaphor: "Will the voter looking for a new dish really be satisfied, when what's presented to him is the same old food, only more heavily spiced?" The paper's verdict: "The CDU has to again become socially concerned. As a bigger version of the [neo-liberal] FDP, it will soon lose its status as one of Germany's major parties."

The conservative Die Welt also agrees. Echoing the commentary in Die Zeit, the paper writes, "What was missing was the big perspective, the Grand Design. The campaign was missing authority, the ethic of conviction." How did Merkel's campaign become so desiccated? According to the writer's analysis, the Christian Democrats forgot that "modern conservatism wins elections under the banner of three themes: traditional values, patriotism and free-market economics." By overwhelmingly focusing their campaign on economic policy, Germany's conservatives set themselves up for defeat. As a result the voters weren't sure what the CDU stood for, nor what its vision for the country was.