Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Politician as parent

The leaders of our three main political parties are all – following current fashion – parents of young children.

Current fashion also demands close involvement with ones children, attending to their every need, banishing them to the naughty step when reasoned argument fails to bring an obedient response.

And so leaders face, at the very least, hard choices when it comes to a crisis & deciding how far they can abandon, temporarily, the care of their young children to others.

It is also a common observation & source of complaint that the political class is becoming a thing apart, made up of people who go from involvement in student politics, to researcher to political adviser to MP to minister without ever having experience of running any real world organisation.

They also lack what forty-somethings of previous generations had, the experience of letting their children go, of changing from beloved parent, protector, provider & the fount of all wisdom, into an embarrassment, of finding that you have eventually to let them learn through their own mistakes, choose a path which may not be the one you would have chosen or hoped for, make their life for themselves.

Perhaps this is just one more contributory factor to the modern politicians insistence on micro-managing our behaviour - it’s the only way they have learned themselves, so far.

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