I don’t think that the fact that there are some venal politicians means the system is “broken.” Human nature is pretty constant — there have always been venal politicans, and there always will be (just as there are corrupt and/or mediocre people in all occupations). But as James Griffin notes, there are also politicians who are honorable. Perhaps what has happened is that because of the greater availability of information these days, we are more aware of what goes on “behind the scenes” in politics almost instantly, instead of having to wait years or decades for someone to write about it in a biography or a history book, and some of it is not pretty. But I would venture a guess that politics today is really not that different from politics 50 or 100 or 150 years ago. We seem to muddle through nevertheless.