More of the same changes, more of the same results?

It seems like there are elections and resignations and appointments and complaints and protests all over the news these days. Well, the UK/Europe news, anyway. Maybe it's an easy angle to take for a journalist, but a lot of the stories seem to be about how one candidate (or party or whatever) is trying to make a new start and to recreate the promise of their party (or country or whatever).

After the last ten years of American politics, I find it kind of hard to respond optimistically to any of those sorts of stories. It just doesn't seem likely that any sort of organized rule-playing game is going to bring up a winner who's interested in profoundly changing the rules of that same game. I hesitate to look for any examples that seem to be in line with that metaphor, since the only one that seems to offer a halfway positive result involves William Shatner...