I really hate what the established paths into politics are.
If you want to go left, you join a protest group and be loud, angry and ignorant for a few years. Be sure not to constructively engage with any issue, and absolutely never miss an opportunity to take a shot at "the establishment".
If you want to go right, be sure to never have a single independent thought or belief. Stick to topics of safe established public opinion and absolutely never take a stand on anything unless it's something the left decides to protest. Groom yourself nicely and learn to lick everyone's arse and you'll win loads of votes. Naturally, in the background, make loads of friends in the business and legal communities and leverage these to gain power.
I once ran for SU council, because I was sick of seeing the SU services and facilities getting increasingly run down year after year, when very simple fixes were possible to make the place so much more enjoyable and useful for everyone. I ran a campaign with the themes of openness and access, intending to be fully available to the student body, and responsive to them. I know there was a huge number of students with very similar gripes over many years that the SU never did anything about, because they were too busy with one failed grand scheme after another.
The moment I lost any chance of getting elected was during the hustings, I was next to " party Jim " and " nice guy mike ". The question was what were we going to do to get a bar opened on campus. Nice guy Mike was all for it and would do his best, party Jim would not only open a bar but have massive rave foam parties 5 nights a week with 1 euro drinks. This had been an ongoing thing for years, and I'd looked into the feasibility of it, whether we could even legally do it, and the answer was basically no, it would cost too much to set up a bar legally on the campus, and in my first year when we had a bar in the evenings (illegally), nobody even fucking used it because there was a pub and off license directly adjacent to the college.
So I told them so, as directly and honestly as possible that I didn't intend to pursue opening a bar, and explained the reasons why. There was a murmur of discontent from the audience and I knew then I was sunk. Someone (allegedly from the campaign of the guy who went on to win it) also tore down all my posters. I stayed in the race but I really should've dropped out at that point. After the election, I polled my friends and none of them even bothered to vote, when they had been the ones who encouraged me to run to begin with.
It's 5 years later now, and they're absolutely no closer to ever having a bar on campus. I guess the lesson I learned is if you try and be honest and get work done in politics, you'll be run over by the ones who'll say anything to get elected. I guess I'm in a minority when I say all I want is representatives and leaders who are capable of making sensible, tough decisions, and explaining and justifying them with evidence driven, reasoned explanations, treating the electorate with respect in other words. I guess we get the politicians we deserve.