There’s that expression to describe tedium: like watching paint dry. It could be substituted: like waiting for the US presidential election to be called — or at least the 2020 version.
If I were a wiser, or at least more discerning, person I wouldn’t admit to the very many hours wasted this past week studying the pundits’ projections of how the voting preferences in Allegheny County in Pennsylvania are likely to skew.
None of this fairly arcane, idiosyncratic information is likely to stand me in good stead at any future time. Still, there was a gift in all the commentary: CNN appeared to have Doris Kearns Goodwin on rotation.
Kearns Goodwin, a revered historian of several US presidents, sparkles in her scholarly commentary. Her evocation of Abraham Lincoln, who issued the proclamation of emancipation from slavery in 1862 and is the only president Donald Trump concedes may have done more for black Americans than he, is particularly compelling.
Lincoln was a stickler for his word as his bond, saying: “My word is out and I can’t take it back.” Even more extraordinary than the store Lincoln placed in his word was the store others placed therein. In her book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, Kearns Goodwin describes the months between Lincoln’s proclamation of emancipation and its entry into force on January 1 1863.
A fierce backlash within the union meant the party Lincoln led — the Republicans — suffered a dramatic loss in electoral support in the intervening months. Moreover, the civil war battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 resulted in defeat and casualties of such scale for union soldiers that the battle scene was described to Lincoln as “butchery”.
These developments meant Lincoln’s plan to secure emancipation at a time when union morale was high lay in tatters. Speculation was rife that amid such opposition Lincoln would withdraw the proclamation.
Yet Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist leader, assured his followers that this would not be so, writing in his newsletter that Lincoln would “take no step backward” and that “if he has taught us to confide in nothing else, he has taught us to confide in his word”.
Those words are especially remarkable when you consider that Douglass was otherwise fairly scathing of Lincoln for the “slothful deliberation which he has observed in reaching this obvious policy”.
It seems almost impossible now to imagine political antagonists crediting the other with integrity and sincerity in their word and action. And yet, it is not as if the matters of that time — for Lincoln and Douglass — were less divisive or consequential than those that present themselves today.
They were addressing issues of such moment as the end of slavery, but it appears the deliberations and discourse occurred in a universe in which there was not so much an ability to trust (in the sense of motivation) the interlocutor, as an ability at least to credit or place store in their words. `
That is now so obviously missing in the US political landscape. Instead, what has marked out this US election season and its political currency for some time are the accusations from each side of dishonesty and hypocrisy and actual demonstrations thereof.
This is not peculiar to the US. The devaluation of integrity and sincerity in political discourse and engagement is obvious to those watching SA politics too. It was on full display last week at the Zondo commission, where if you weren’t rubber-necking at the car crash of the US elections, you were rubbing your eyes in disbelief at the witness testimony offered to judge Raymond Zondo.
• Fritz, a public interest lawyer, is CEO of Freedom Under Law.
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