Are politicians naturally hypocritical?

Other professions attract personality types, like editors are perfectionists, engineers are logical, nurses tend to be caring, etc.

Or is being a hypocrite a result of the pressures of being a politician? Like blowing off steam.

I'm thinking of Spitzer, and pretty much every other political scandal dug up over the years.

Most politicians are ex lawyers, so think about they would defend a client they use the same tactics to defend themselves.

yes absolutely their all scum.

Damn right they are. They say one thing to get your vote and then do the opposite.

Riley's onto something--it's like that thing about gays being promiscuous. Gays aren't promiscuous because we're gay, it's because we are men! Politicians are corrupt because they are politicians, but because they are lawyers!

It's been a long time since there was an ideological revolution in the U.S. and people demanded integrity in their politicians and valued thinking over personality.

The result of that is a system where those who are thoroughly skilled in compromise are more likely to gain the most prominent posts. So a centrist C may compromise on one vote with rightwing A and then again later on a similar issue with leftwing B. Both of those compromises might make sense at the time and independently of each other. But then someone who wants C out of office looks at the two decisions and yells Hypocrite.

Add in the fact that every single one of us has done and will do things that we regret and are embarrassed about. It's just that a few of us have a lot of money to do stupid things with, the contacts to help us do them, and an entire industry eager to publicize them.