It is worse now, at least the legal money side.

Citizens United removed the limits on the international money as well as the domestic money.

Why is the countey tearing itself apart? Because the foreign money has interest in weakening, stealing, amd profiteering from the USA.

Conversely, the domestic money wants to keep the domestic part from falling completely apart; at least until the real estate, votes, and grant money for the revitalization project are all lined up.

Your statement reminds me of entrepreneurship: you've got a dream, a vision, a goal to improve people's lives. What you don't got is enough money to get your dream into the hands of people it will help. So, you go in search of people with money who honestly don't give a damn about your dream, they just want to know how it's going to get them more money, which they already have in abundance but somehow feel the need to continue to grow their hoard. They want to see business plans, with exit strategies. They want to maximize ROI, minimize (monetary) risk, minimize time to market - and those are the criteria your pitch will be evaluated on relative to all the others they receive all the time.

Politicians aren't selling a business plan, they're selling a legislative agenda. They don't have to show ROI, they have to show low-cost electability.