How to fix politics, in 1 easy step...

My advice to all elected officials: do Not fund raise. At all. Assume a 2 year term. Become untethered. What could you do if you didn’t have to spend hours a day making calls seeking money? Seek the public’s approval with your good work. If we like what we see, you’ll be back.

— Geoff Ginter (@geoff_ginter) November 15, 2018

Actually you can go even further:  limit all positions to a single term only.  Get rid of re-elections entirely.  Make sure the official focuses on the job, and only the job.  "Then nobody is going to have a long-term vision", you may say.  But nobody has a long-term vision anyways: year 1, you're working on political consolidation, making sure you have allies in all the right place; year 2, you start doing some real work; by year 3, you're thinking about re-election, and the rest of your term is a goner.

So candidates: go in with your key issue(s) and action plan, focus and promote it like hell, bet everything on it.  Don't talk about "your country".  Not "your party".  Not "feelings".  Not "the other guy".  The same way Obama and the Democrats bet the house on healthcare, which ended up costing them the House (2010) and Senate (2014) majorities.

Because you will see what a leader does when he/she has no other objectives.  The popular saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is flawed, because it absolves those in power of their personal shortcomings.

As Lincoln’s biographer Robert Ingersoll put it: “Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. . . . If you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.”  Selfish leaders hoard the power for personal gain, while good ones share it for the common good. And the ultimate test of character for those in power is how they treat others who lack it.