Download Article Years ago, at the Munich Security Conference, I found myself squeezed in on the steps of the grand staircase of a hotel ballroom, trying, dutifully but vainly, to follow a more than usually humdrum speech by Germany’s first female chancellor. Tuning out, I recognized the one-star general hunkered down beside me, a senior staffer in the chancellery. I tapped his sleeve and said, “So what’s it like to work for her?” He turned to me and grinned appreciatively. “It’s like working next to a nuclear power plant. It just runs, and runs, and runs.” And how it ran. Angela Merkel is now in the final months of her fourth term in office, her last, which is set to end with national elections on September 26. Only Helmut Kohl, the chancellor who oversaw the joining of East and West Germany in 1990, held office for longer. A Pew poll last year showed Merkel to be the world’s most trusted leader.