Politics rarely reaches the optimal solution these days. Either we're spending too much or cutting too much. Either we're favouring the unions or the employers. Either we're censoring too much or spreading immorality.
This problem arises from the fact that optimal solutions are almost always a balance, in the middle; but the dominant political parties are either one side or the other.
For example consider taxes: if taxes are 0% there is no government, but if taxes are 100% the government is running everything, experience has shown that neither of these situations is optimal. Yet regardless of the current tax rate the right-wing party will always argue for them to be lower, and likewise a left-wing party will always argue for them to be higher. Clearly the truth depends on the current tax rate, taxes which are too high reduces businesses ability to improve/expand but taxes which are too low reduces the governments ability to provide important/necessary services.
But rather than spend their time doing research, collecting data, and debating the merit of various sources of evidence to determine where the optimum tax rate is, politicians waste their time promoting their ideology and shouting incorrently at each other to score news coverage and publicity.
Another example is censorship. Libertarians argue that all censorship is bad. Where as social conservatives argue that censorship is necessary to prevent a "moral corruption" of the people were pretty much anything opposed to their own views constitute "moral corruption". In truth, clearly a diversity of opinions and freedom of expression are important to reach optimal decisions, but likewise some images should not be freely available to children and hateful ideas can cause conflict and danger to society.
The problem has been the "professionalization" of politics. Statistics, marketing, and psychology has created a "science of getting elected" which has fundamentally changed politics. No longer is it about determining the best way forward for the country, nor is it about explaning policies or governance to the electorate. It is about polls, strategy, tricks, and advertising.
As with anything else the science cannot be unlearned, strategies cannot be unformulated, tricks cannot be undiscovered. The only option is to reform, redesign, and rethink governance so the tricks don't work anymore, the strategies backfire, and the science is no longer right.
