and finance minister, and somewhat publicly inconspicuous. but he has a huge amount of public self—confidence, which shows when, as president of the city state of hamburg, which he once was in his career, he had to face certain scandals that fell off, rolled off his back like water off a duck�*s feathers. and he he managed to overcome them pretty easily. and interestingly, he was considered by his own party, the spd, which is a social—minded sort of left—of—centre party, not to be the leader of the party three years ago when they voted against scholz to becoming the leader of the spd, amazingly, hooray, hooray, a year later, the same party which rejected him as leader appointed him to be candidate for the successor to mrs merkel. so that shows you what sort