Are political advisers not destined to be politicians themselves because they cannot keep their mouths shut ?

Politicians, so we are told, are supposed to be rather obsessed with the sound of their own voices. However, it seems that the difference between a politicians and an adviser is the ability of politicians to internalise what they may be thinking whilst an adviser speaks out loud.

Take for examples a couple of examples of advisers to conservatives on either side of the Atlantic in the last couple of days.

Yesterday one of Boris Johnson's aides was forced to quit after he said "let them go if they don't like it here" when asked about how black people might react to decisions taken in London. Mayor Johnson let his aide leave his post swiftly, but it says much that a person who says such things could have been given a job in the first place. It is also worrying that it was said to an undercover reporter in that it gives the impression that some advisers might be saying one thing to the press, but secretly believe something very different.

Today we read if an adviser who spoke the truth too loudly in the US. An adviser to Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain said that a September 11-type attack before the November election would benefit McCain. A rather sinister thing to say, but given that the Republicans want to label Barack Obama as week on national security, the adviser was daft to say out loud something the Democrats must fear on a political level as well as a national security level.

It seems to me that advisers to politicians are sometimes too keen to make names for themselves and lack the ability to keep quiet. Perhaps it highlights the real art to making it to the top is to listen more and talk less.