[supportlocal4h]

>It used to be that elite status was acquired through bravery, intelligence and integrity

It used to be that people tried to manipulate public perception to appear brave, intelligent, ...

[adventured]

Very little has actually changed about the quality of politicians in the US. People are just prone to forgetting the bad. Not that long ago - the 1970s - the south was overflowing with ignorant, racist politicians that were outright fans of the KKK and aggressively pro segregation. And so on it goes if you keep going backwards in time.

What has primarily changed is the quantity of levers and how massive the levers are at their disposal. The surface area of potential corruption has radically expanded in the US over the post WW2 era (part of that expansion of power was the military industrial complex and the superpower bureaucracy that went along with it). The larger and more complex the government, the more laws it has on the books to utilize, the greater the corruption, inevitably.

Oh, and now every idiot has easy access to an epic scale bullhorn via social media. That's amplifying the stupid, which would not have received much press time or public discourse time in past generations.