Compromise is part of the price you pay for power

World of Politics with Harry McGee

Iremember chatting a long time ago to the great Con Houlihan about American novelists – and we got onto the subject of Thomas Wolfe.

Not the guy who wrote Bonfire of the Vanities and always wears a white suit, spats and a Panama hat – no; this was the other Thomas Wolfe, the novelist from the early part of the 20th century who wrote four lengthy novels before his early death

And Con accused him of being a lazy writer.

How would he be lazy? I protested. He wrote doorsteps of novels.

That was his laziness, said Con. He wrote vast novels but could not edit them down. For Con, all the labour and the pain of writing wasn’t the writing itself, it was the whittling down, the distillation of all those words and meandering sentences into something concentrated and small and precious.

Which brings us to the Gettysburg Address.

Nobody remembers the guy who spoke for two hours before Abraham Lincoln rose to his feet to deliver the Gettysburg address.

Few speeches have endured as robustly as those 272 words delivered at the site of the famous battlefield, with its perfect definition of a democratic state.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…”

Or the rousing last sentence which hoped “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Well if 272 words was all the rage for US presidents in in 1863, it’s 140 characters in 2016.

It’s brevity but rather the brevity of the powerful rather than the power of brevity. And there is a difference.

Donald Trump is president-elect but has yet to show any signs of becoming presidential in manner or sentiment. And he continues to use twitter like a troll.

In the last 48 hours he has insulted China and had a big dig at Saturday Night Live, the comedy show which has lampooned him. He was especially unimpressed with actor Alec Baldwin’s impression of him (which is magnificent by the way!).

“Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable!” he harumphed. “Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad.”

And from yesterday: “If the press would cover me accurately and honourably, I would have far less reason to tweet. Sadly, I don’t know if that will ever happen.”

I somehow doubt US school kids will be learning those tweets off by heart in the future.

Impetuous and provocative, they are sophisticated in their own way, reflecting a cynicism and a nihilism that has become pervasive in Britain, in the US, and through the EU.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.