Alisa Miller

What Kelly Ayotte and Sarah Palin have to teach us about hope



Posted: Friday, August 21, 2009

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http://alisa-miller.com

Before anyone reading this article hastens to jump into conclusions I need to stress that when I do write about politics it is always to highlight developmental behavior trends rather than comment on the validity of individual parties and their platforms and this is so with this case.

Palin has become a little of a joke with her name used as a noun to describe an entire series of not so complimentary actions (as in "she just did a Palin") yet she continues to fascinate us and, as I am writing this, Kelly Ayotte is about to enter the national stage with political ambitions of her own.

Analyzing the political capabilities and qualities as a leader of each of them here would be about as constructive as reviewing the literary qualities and originality of the Harry Potter books. It would be highly contentious and do little to change the phenomenon. And Ayotte and Palin are as much a phenomenon as the Harry Potter books. They, too, have come up from nowhere and captured our imagination.

So the question here is why? Why do we believe or rather why would we want to believe that a hockey mum from some small town with no political experience and political pedigree would make a great leader? After all, if we were to juxtapose the situation to another profession like, say, brain surgery, I would most certainly want the best qualified professional money could buy to mess with the grey matter inside my head. Yet, in politics we are prepared to cast logic and judgment aside and hope that, somehow, this time, we will get someone who is different and who will get to lead us in a different way.

The reason we are prepared to take such an insane risk (and insane it certainly is) lies in the fact that we hope that those who lead us will turn out to be just like us and, in virtue of the fact, somehow better. I have written about the difficulty people in public trust face before and here, we have our desire to find ‘true leaders' writ large.

Maybe, sometime, this gamble will pay off. Until this actually happens we are probably doomed to keep on gambling, putting our aspirations on the unlikely candidates in the hope that they somehow, untainted by conventional politics as they must be, are also most likely to do a better job.

Alisa Miller is a relationship counselor and relationship author. Her articles on relationships and how to have the perfect marriage have appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the world. She is the author of the Ultimate Guide to the Perfect Relationship which is being translated into three languages and has been read by thousands all over the world. It can be ordered through Amazon or any good bookshop and it is available as an eBook from most quality online eBook outlets. She has written a guide on How to Talk to a Girl you Like  which is available to buy from every online eBook retailer as well as her own website, which she runs herself and which contains hundreds of articles with useful tips and advice. She admits that she spends more time online than she should.
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