As the president of the Bundestag announced the result, it was hard to tell what had come across Angela Merkel -- was she nervous or just choked up with emotion? Either way, the often stoic politician could no longer hold her famous poker face. The German parliament had just voted to make her the country's eighth postwar leader and the first woman and former East German  to become chancellor. 

Of course, it may also have simply been a sense of relief after the torturous two months it took Merkel to get to where she is now. Since winning the Sept. 18 election by an extremely thin margin, she's been a magnet of criticism within her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for running a weak campaign that alienated voters by repeatedly calling for unpopular tax hikes and budget cuts. The results were so close, in fact, that for weeks the Social Democrats refused to concede the chancellorship.

After the inconclusive vote, it would have been easier to predict Merkel's political demise than the enormous personal triumph she celebrated on Tuesday. Still, in practice that victory could soon appear less spectacular. Merkel has secured the chancellery, but her conservative Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have been forced into an uneasy alliance with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Her task will not be an easy one. She takes the helm in Berlin at a difficult time for Europe's largest economy. Fettered by weak growth and high unemployment, Germany will need bold leadership to get back on track. Whether Merkel can guide the so-called "grand coalition" on such a course, however, is far from certain.

Rebel MPs vote against Merkel

On paper, Germany's two largest political camps will have a commanding majority in the lower house, the Bundestag. But Tuesday's vote tells another story. Merkel received 397 votes -- 51 fewer than what CDU/CSU and SPD have in total. Granted, that far surpasses the parliamentary working majority of 308, but it could augur ill for Merkel's efforts to pursue tough yet necessary reforms in the future.

The Social Democrats tried to put the result in the best light on Tuesday. The SPD parliamentary floor leader Peter Struck assured legislation would "certainly not" fail due to rebel MPs. But some leading conservatives remain skeptical. "The SPD still has to prove they can get all men on deck for difficult issues," said Jürgen Rüttgers, the Christian Democratic governor of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. 

Clearly some Social Democrats could not bring themselves to support the woman many feared during the election campaign would become Germany's very own Margaret Thatcher. Of course, there was never much danger of that and even less so now that the grand coalition will force her to govern  often by the lowest common denominator.

Still, the bipartisan nature of Merkel's government could become a strength if it can gain broad backing within German society for unpopular yet necessary reforms. Germans love solving problems by consensus and on Tuesday at least, several politicians from the left and right seemed to getting along extremely well with one another.

"You know I'm not a courtier," Horst Seehofer, the new agriculture minister and occasional Merkel critic, told journalists gathered in the Reichstag. "But it's going well, it's working."

The need to connect

Unfortunately, what Merkel most needs to pursue these bold measures is her greatest weakness: her political presence. Merkel got her professional start as a reserved and calculating scientist and she has never fully managed to shed that image. Unlike her congenial predecessor Gerhard Schröder, she finds it difficult to connect to people.

Media savvy and charismatic Schröder called snap elections last spring because of his inability to convince members of his own coalition to follow his course of difficult economic reforms.  Unless Merkel's new position allows her to grow beyond her natural tendency to be reserved and cautious, the new chancellor may find it hard to keep her unlikely coalition focused and effective.

Merkel's transformation will have to come swiftly. The response to her proposed program of tax hikes and spending cuts has been muted, to say the least. And unless she can convince her fellow Germans that such sacrifices will lead the country to better days, there is the real danger the steps the government is considering could do as much harm as good.

Anyone who has spent time in Germany recently is aware the country is deeply mired in a crisis of confidence. Germans are almost pathologically pessimistic  about their future prospects and they frequently underestimate the potential of the world's third-largest economy.