Politicians like power, and they do so for a variety of
reasons. Most believe their ideas
deserve to be realised for the sake of the public good, or at the very least
rationalise their ambition in terms of this adherence to a higher ideal; very
few would unashamedly admit to vying for power for its own
sake. In democratic states, the
distinction is, in any case, hard to make: no politician was ever elected on a
platform of unadulterated, unjustified ambition.
