For nearly a full minute, delegates at the Christian Democratic Union’s party congress in Stuttgart were applauding the guest of honor seated in the front row when the man on the podium began to fidget. “At her side …,” he ventured, attempting to introduce the next dignitary. Only when he interrupted the applause a second time did the hall finally quiet down. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor and leader of the center-right CDU, had just experienced what must have felt like a mixed blessing: