My apologies to Melvin Udall and Used Car Salesmen. Question: How to define a Politician.  Answer: Think of a Used Car Salesman and take away all reason and accountability.  Republicans or Democrats either or.  They all make me sick. They all behave in their self interest.

With all due respect to my fellow citizen's opinion, VMac is deeply wrong. As long as we demonize doing politics, we will remain disengaged from our political power. Peiple who run for office are always partially motivated by their own interests—that's the basic assumption in our economic system, so what sense does it make to lionize self interest in economics but condemn it in politics?

Politics is a process of negotiation and compromise. The results are imperfect, but better than the results of leaving the process entirely to self-interested economic actors, because they have repeatedly proven that, when the public interest conflicts with personal interest, greed wins. See the banking crisis, LTCM, etc. Politics forces participants to account to some extend for public interests, because the vote is the last word on whether politicians will keep their jobs.

One needn't choose Democratic or Republican. In fact, choosing and blindly following a party is the best way to succumb to a lack of accountability. But if you learn about, meet and decide about voting for someone the way you decide to hire someone, you can enforce real accountability. Being a citizen takes more work than most people want to admit. Bad politicians are just the output of a disengaged citizenry.