The great corrupter of public man is the ego. Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.
“And Oliver North was really a good soldier, up to the last moment, shoving memos into the shredder and defending the policy to the end.”
“But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.”