w @ 35: What is the true model that explains the observed behavior of politicians?
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What is not clear is what alternative model the public is moving toward.
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The other thing that is starting to bother me is that some actors appear to be behaving against their best interest.
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You sure ask a lot of questions!

Politicians are just people. I know you, and most, especially hereabouts on BC, look for rationality in people’s actions, rationality in terms of the real world. I don’t. People have their scripts, which they don’t particularly understand. A good script is mostly rational, but the actor may not really comprehend the rationality. Just how this all comes about – is complex. People are often self-destructive, it’s hardly rare. Politicians can be self-destructive, and destructive of the larger enterprise of which they are players. This should not be shocking. There are imperatives of leadership, of public life. People – politicians – will desire to stay on top, at the cost of their honor, their families, and the nation. Power corrupts, etc.

The public, is another matter. I’m afraid the (American) public is under all sorts of socioeconomic pressures, and it not at its best. And in Pelosi, Reid, and Obambus, we have some of the stupidest, most blindly partisan, unobjective, dogmatic players in this nation’s history. The MSM has gone into some kind of horrible perverted meltdown, totally partisan, smug beyond anything possible in the twentieth century.

Look around and take notes, this is more than likely how a great empire falls. But a great empire takes a lot of falling, so it may yet catch itself and ratchet back up, and at least it’s liable to ratchet down slowly over another generation or so. Barring (un)expected military/nuclear events.