Learning to fly

Before giving his New Year's address, Václav Klaus might have used his excellent German to listen to Angela Merkel's and Hörst Köhler's speeches. Merkel's was filled with exaggerated schoolgirl enthusiasm, but it was positive and forward-looking. Germany had a difficult year, and the chancellor and the president tried to make their fellow citizens forget it. "Together we are strong," Köhler urged. Klaus wasn't overly critical, and he was coming off a short illness, but his mono-tone speech lacked inspiration. All is not well in the Czech lands, but repeating the same old things about bureaucracy, the EU, and the need for Czechs to stand on their own two feet achieves little. The CR doesn't need more of Jiří Paroubek's self-congratulatory hyperbole, but it does need a voice that will inspire it to even greater things. "A person can only fly as far as he has it in his head," Köhler said. [Czech Republic European Union Hoerst Koehler premier]