Schlein is set to become the PD’s longest-serving secretary. An analysis of an adjective that was once reserved for boilers

Until yesterday, ‘long-lived’ was an adjective reserved for tortoises, oak trees, Sardinian shepherds and boilers; when applied to a living person, it always carried a hint of premature condolences. Now it has become the most coveted compliment in national politics. The PD’s secretariat is ‘long-lived’, Meloni’s government is ‘long-lived’, and the Republic as a whole is now long-lived; indeed, by dint of counting down the days, it has come to resemble those who measure their blood pressure every hour and diligently record it in a squared notebook.

Tomorrow, Elly Schlein will indeed become the longest-serving secretary in the history of the PD, having surpassed Pier Luigi Bersani’s 1,260 days; that is to say, if we are to be as precise as the occasion demands, she will have led the party for far longer than she has been a member. A circumstance which, in any other sphere of organised human activity – be it a block of flats, a bocce club or the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament – would have raised at least an eyebrow, a murmur or an anonymous letter; yet within the PD it is hailed as a milestone, indeed as a sort of recovery, given that the party has always practised a form of affectionate and recurring cannibalism towards its secretaries, to the extent that the survival of any one of them now seems no less miraculous than the discovery of a shipwreck survivor who, having stepped out of the lifeboat after months at sea, is found to have actually put on weight. The secret to longevity at the Nazareno lies in the diet, it seems. Mediation soup reheated twice a day, nothing raw, nothing requiring prolonged chewing. Physical exercise is moderate, regular and never forward-looking. The decisive factor, however, is the almost total absence of the substance that wreaks havoc in such circles, namely resolve and clarity, which prove as deadly here as malaria elsewhere. Bersani met his end over an election at the Quirinale, Renzi over a referendum, Zingaretti over a surge of disgust, and Letta over a political line. She – that is, Elly, or rather Schlein – has not called for anything that could not be postponed, including the primaries, and the phrase ‘stubbornly united’, when viewed against the light with a slight tilt of the head, reads ‘stubbornly seated’.

On Friday 4 September, at 7.00 pm, at the port of Bari, Fratelli d’Italia called its members together to celebrate the moment when the government will surpass the 1,412 days of the Berlusconi II administration and become the ‘longest-serving’ in the history of the Republic. Anyone who recalls the ‘summer’ governments and the crises that flared up in mid-August only to be resolved by October will agree that this achievement is neither trivial nor coincidental. Yet, until yesterday, it had never seemed a sufficient reason to hire out a harbour and organise a fanfare. We are not celebrating an approved reform, a resolved industrial crisis, or a public works project brought to completion, but a figure that the calendar produces more or less on its own, provided one remains in office. In short, it seems that time – which in the Italian rhetorical tradition was the great judge, the gentleman, the court of appeal where deeds were finally weighed up – has been repurposed as an alibi, and the old saying ‘let posterity pass judgement’ has been replaced by the more cautious ‘in the meantime, we’re still here’. Living a long life is a blessing; on this point, gerontologists brook no argument. The same gerontologists, however – both those in the majority and the opposition – warn that longevity is measured by the years spent in good health, not by those spent in bed.