Who doesn't hate politicians? And why do we hate them? More often than not it is because they lie, or at least are insincere, and because they appear to be corrupt.
The classic experience of a newly independent country is for democratic elections to be held, after which the elected leaders develop a reputation for gross corruption, after which there is a military coup in an effort to shut the corruption down, which almost never suceeds for any length of time in accomplishing that goal.
At home, examples of corrupt politics are also abundant.
There is Tom DeLay, claiming the Terri Shiavo is carrying on conversations with her liquified brain, and Senator Frist trying to make diagnoses based on videotape.
There are Army Generals who classify experiment quasi-tanks as off the shelf commercially available products, and Air Force generals who classify a plane which couldn't be less suited for supporting troops in the middle of a ground battle (close air support), the F-22, as a plane designed for that mission.
There are the "senior administration officials" who treatened, apparently with impunity, a government actuary with loss of his job if he didn't lie to Congress about the cost of a prescription drug benefit, and there is Chairman Greenspan arguing that tax cuts increase government revenue when he knows better.
There is Attorney General, and former White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who claims he is not aware of any cases of extraordinary rendition, despite the fact that the Justice Department has already litigated just one such case since he has taken office, and despite the fact that it has been spelled out in detail by the New York Times and Washington Post (and soj, of course).
Members of Congress don't even pretend that campaign contributions don't buy access, and the corollation between their votes and the people who contribute money to them is pretty solid. Common Cause takes on the issue case by case, but few people doubt that private funding has a pervasive impact on American politics.
As if money wasn't enough, scandal has become a major tool of political warfare. Scandal may have driven the decision of Colorado Governor Ownes, rather than less promising candidate Pete Coors, to run for the U.S. Senate. In a system where the incumbent re-election rate in the House substantially exceeds 90%, a significant share of all open seats arise from scandals. Porter Goss was forced to revoke the nomination of a man to be his deputy because he had a shoplifting incident on his record. More than one candidate for high office has been taken down for failing to pay employment taxes for a nanny.
I could go on. But, this diary is not a catalog of political malfeasance. The list above simply makes a point. Corruption is abundant in American politics, indeed, in almost all politics of much significance.
I also don't what to paint the deluded picture that malfeasance is solely the province of one party. I won't say that Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be corrupt, and I won't say that there aren't any clean politicians in either party. But, certain many Democratic politicans aren't so clean themselves. We lost a Democratic Speaker of the House to corruption in my lifetime, and a Senator from Illinois, two touch lighly on just two prominent examples without unduly eating our own.
This isn't exclusively an American problem either. The American political system may be more corrupt than many, but Germany, France and the United Kingdom have all been rocked by significant scandals in recent memory, the Italian have been famed for their corruption for decades, nobody assumes that the Russian political system is clean, and the LPD hasn't ruled Japan for decades more or less unchallenged, without falling prey to the temptations of power, and those are some of the healthier democracies. In places like Iran, tens of thousands of people die on a regular basis in earthquakes because building inspectors are easily bought off.
Most of the major features of the American political system come from the belief that politicans can't be trusted. Well over a third of the civilian employment of the United States government is vested in independent agencies to avoid Presidential corruption. Elaborate civil service and government procurement systems, which hobble efficient administration, exist because we can't think of a better way to protect government employees and contractors from corrupt politicans. One of the reasons the judiciary has been made far more powerful in the United States than in any other political system in the world, is because it is viewed as one of the least corrupt parts of our system of government. Fear of corruption is at the root of powers of initiative, referrendum and recall, and also drives the intensely fragmented nature of most state and local governments (would we have an elected county surveyor or coroner if we didn't deeply distrust the honesty of the people we elect?).
I seriously doubt that it is ever possible to rid any political system of any significance from rampant corruption. If that's so, the solution may not be to end corruption, but to channel it constructively. How to do this is beyond the scope of today's rant. But, simply beginning with the premise that power will corrupt is a good start.