It's useful to start by first defining what power is (I dont like dictionary.com's definition). I define power as the ability to inspire emotions in people. I think most would define power as the ability to impose one's will upon others, but that is contingent upon first inspiring the emotion in them. You may have the power to kill a man, but that does not put him under your power unless he first fears death. This is an interesting side note: by not fearing pain nor death you become completely free from anyone else's power over you. This also means that other things besides humans can be powerful, like artwork, music, stories, etc. I'm not going to be focusing on those too much though.
Politicians are defined by our constitution as the holders of power in our society. Fear of the repercussions of violating the law gives politicians a hold over a large percentage of the population, considering the ratio of elected politicians to US citizens. It makes me wonder, what kind of person would actively seek to be a politician and hold reign on that much power? Obviously they would have to be very ambitious and greedy, in one way or another, to hold power. To win an American-style campaign they also have to be surprisingly narcissistic in order to project the kind of image that voters want in their politicians.
There is another category of politicians who I suppose you could call idealists who actively seek office in order to bring about what they perceive to be good things for those they represent. Based on our current political events and dialogue, i'd imagine that idealists's numbers are comparatively pretty small. With those kind of personality characteristics of the average politician in mind, it's not that surprising that so many of them become embroiled in some scandal or other.
Power also has an interesting corrupting effect on people; i'm sure some of you have heard the phrase absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you have the ability to impose your will on other people (through inspiring emotions in them), it's easy to see how one could end up abusing it. It ends up amplifying what some consider negative characteristics. For example, most of us don't enjoy doing menial chores. Say though that you have a slave to do it for you. Then you have no incentive whatsoever to do it yourself, and soon it grows until the slave is doing everything for you. And so, your initial laziness in all of us soon compounds into a much bigger problem.
I think the key thing to the corrupting effects of power is not that you have the ability to impose yourself on another, but that in many instances there are not consequences for doing so. For a theoretical example, there are legal checks on American politician's power which attempt to prevent such abuses of authority, like preventing illegal relationships between politicians and their interns/staff whom they certainly have power over. What happens with power though, is that once a powerful person gets away with a small deviant act, they eventually begin to build an impression that they have an inherent immunity to being caught because they are so powerful. And so their deviant acts grow in scale until they are caught. Hence, anthony weiner.
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