Good post, though I don't live in the US, but in the Finland where we've got a possibly worse government, but in different ways.

One major cause for all the corruption may be your constitution which places too much power in the hands of a single person, the president.

Whenever you've got a single person controlling too many things, you've got more possibilities for corruption..

Where I live the politicians are overall even sillier than in the US, but we've got possibly less corruption because the voters effectively get way more influence in who will ultimately be made ministers. With us, the members of the "house of representatives" effectively choose the ministers from among themselves. They will usually be people who have got a lot of votes themselves, though not always..