Issac Bailey is an interim member of The Charlotte Observer editorial board and the James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College. He was a 2014 Harvard University Nieman fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @ijbailey. The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) Two seemingly contradictory recent Gallup Poll findings sum up what it means to be a woman in the United States who dares to go where only men have gone before: Americans love to think of talented, ambitious women who have overcome obstacles — but the reality of a woman assuming a position of power, particularly over men? That's not welcome.

Issac Bailey

In sum, she is subject to a curse that affects too many women in 21st century America: Americans admire but don't much like her. We frequently and consistently elect and hire men to lead us on the biggest stages even if we don't like them, even if they are uncouth, even if they are unqualified. But for women seeking the highest office, talent isn't enough; neither is accomplishment.

And thus far, no one has discovered the precise formula that will make a woman palatable for enough Americans to break the country's shameful streak of never having chosen a woman as head of state.

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This disturbing aversion is also why nearly a century after women began gaining the right to vote, we've had so few female governors and US senators and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (no matter how qualified the women who have sought such offices). It is why Donald Trump, with historically low approval ratings, sits in the Oval Office as the most powerful person in the free world and is considered the second-most admired man -- behind only Barack Obama, one year removed from his presidency, who nonetheless topped this year's Gallup Poll for the 10th time.

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