Can we stop treating politicians like celebrities?

[annandale]

Blair mania to Bliar/war criminal
'I agree with Nick' to Clegg trashing his entire career and losing his seat
Nicola Sturgeon love-in to gilt off the gingerbread and suddenly she's not flavour of the month any more
Desperate for Theresa May to win because at least she's not Gove, then she's the world's worst leader

Corbyn and Davidson...?

I'm absolutely loving this election result and find politics as entertaining as the next person but I really dislike this sticking whoever on a pedastal, they're perfect, brilliant, hilarious, just like you and me - and then treating them as a traitor as soon as they make a decision that isn't perfect or they make a choice between brutal real world options.

It doesn't help us find real leaders IMO.

Some of them did have charisma - both Blair and Thatcher did, although I personally could stand neither of them. Some of the most effective are the least flashy, although only Clem Attlee, who had a lot to be modest about, springs to mind.

YANBU, I have said similar recently. Sturgeon was bound to fall eventually and Corbyn and Davidson will too.

Blair seems to have taken a vow of silence since the election.

But what would happen to Clem Attlee now? He went into a coalition led by a Tory, had absolutely no truck with state education for his children, used troops to end a dock strike and supervised the creation of a defence budget so enormous his successors weren't sure how to spend it. The 1945-51 Labour administration were hugely enthusiastic about wars of intervention as well. He was absolutely sure about his principles - anticommunism and Beveridge's four freedoms among them I think - but he was far from some plaster saint perfect meme-bot.

I agree politicians are not celebrities, but looking back, its the ones that are initially good orators and have credible policies for the time, that appear to become 'celebrities' as give people (often false) hope.

Clegg mentioned is a good example, as promised a 'new' type of politics at pre general election leader debates, but at the end of the day once they get in a position of power, they have to face the same problems of the state as the outgoing party, so what CAN be entirely new?

To my mind when looking at a leader or party over any length of time, let their record and historians be their judge.

Especially what stuff they inherited, and what stuff they leave, rather than any hero worship in between.