All things considered, I admire the politician.
That is, the politician who does not enter the fray in bad faith and with a pathological or calculating intention to abuse his position and powers. I suspect there is an enormous gravitational pull that threatens to suck into the morass of corrupt dealings even the most morally pristine among politicians. Still, I believe there are many honest politicians, and it is these that I admire, and even some of the corrupt ones, notably those who have fought and resisted their corruption only to succumb to it at some point, tragically.
Politics is a tragic practice.
In a democracy, it is the task of politics to accomplish the impossible. Democracy makes freedom possible. One side of freedom seeks the admission and encouragement of maximal dissent in society. The other side of freedom seeks to ensure peace and productive ways of dealing with one another. For more see my The Political Logic of Freedom.
If freedom works well — that is, if democracy works well, too — we are likely to have structured the populace into adherents of sternly competing views and interests. If freedom and democracy are to make any sense, if they are to be effective, they need to ensure that peace and decency prevails among human beings in the very presence of unheard-of degrees of dissension. Managing this balance is the central task of politics.
A good politician, therefore, must seek compromise, she needs to adjust her positions in ways unforeseen by her supporters and herself; she must learn from the complicated game the political active play with one another to gain as much influence for their partisan demands as is compatible with a society that keeps totalitarianism at bay.
Another dilemma in which a politician finds herself caught up all the time is brought about by the need for firmness of creed and clarity of message; to ensure these, she will effectively have to engage in a lot of popular dogmatism. In order to attract attention and support, she will tend to be forced to make statements that appear stronger in the pulpit than they turn out once thrown into the cauldron of practical political manoeuvring and compromise.
To cut a long story short: we need people, we urgently need people to engage themselves in this kind of balancing of shifting commitments. Even the best among the politicians are likely to end up acting and talking inconsistently, and certainly they will appear to some as untruthful and dishonest. This is how the politician arrives at his dubious reputation.
The best we can expect of a politician is that her shifting and manoeuvring result in a net benefit to the community, and that her transgressions do not promote a turn of the overall political system toward the destruction of law and decency, as is the case with a totalitarian order.
To keep politics lawful and decent, we need a strong competitive element, strong oppositional forces, and the ever present, effectual threat of regime change.
If the best private institutions cannot be expected to be perfect, if a marriage or a friendship is bound to have us behave in ways we have grounds to regret, what do we expect of an institution whose purpose is to engage us as opponents?
Contrary to what the (classical) liberal seems to assume, there is no automatism such as "the market", or any other substitute, capable of rendering superfluous the open competition of interests, aims, and values that is carried out in the political realm of a free society.
The interaction of human interests — whether in a marriage, a friendship or in a broader societal context — cannot be reproduced by a clockwork that we wind up to stare at and wonder what happens as the mechanism runs its course. The interaction of human interests is a highly indeterminate business.
If we are to remain free, we are dependent on politics, and should be grateful to those who venture into it at the risk of losing their integrity or peace of mind or both. And gratefulness is usefully expressed by an honest effort to comprehend the constraints that put a politician at a high risk to fail morally in larger or smaller ways.
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