Deepak Chopra compares Sarah Palin to the shadow of Barak Obama in a recent commentary:
Palins pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of the other. For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they dont want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind.
His essay is worth a read since doing so reminds us of how sticky politics can be for any of us. Then again, anyone on the Path can let the attachments, both gross and trivial, point them in the direction of Awakening. Watching our clinging, in other words, offers us disidentification from whatever our attachments might be.