Many people get "disillusioned" about politics because they start with illusions - erroneous ideas, false premises and assumptions, and unrealistic expectations. It's better, it's healthier for democracy, to start with realistic attitudes, practical information, and some...
Not-So-Great Expectations

Elsewhere in this site, the Intensify/Downplay schema emphasizes the neutral techniques, how people intensify some persuasion (by means of repetition, association, and composition) and downplay (by means of omission, diversion, and confusion).

Now, shift the emphasis to the general content, what people intensify and downplay, and the observable behavior that: people intensify their own "good" and downplay their own "bad"--- and, in aggression or conflicts, intensify the others' "bad" and downplay the others' "good."
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Originally created for the 1980 elections, Not-So-Great Expectations deals with pattern recognition of the obvious, simple ways to understand how people in politics use language, primarily in their own self-interest. Designed for in-class use, here are two useful print-outs:

(1) Overview - a one-page quadrant chart of Not-So-Great-Expectations linked to more specifics;
(2) Generalizations -- "discussion prompters," or for topics for themes, about the wider context of political rhetoric.

Others have described Conservative-Liberal (Right-Left) differences in other terms: rigid-loose; inflexible-flexible; certitude-doubt; absolutists-situationists; intolerant-tolerant; truth-possessors-truth-seekers; Authoritarian-Democratic personalities; and so on. But, Lakoff argues that most people -- as evidenced in the language we use -- subconsciously think about the abstract relationship between government and citizens in terms of a more concrete metaphoric model of Society-as-Family.

Lakoff's recent book Moral Politics stresses that people vote and see themselves primarily in moral terms. Conservatives and Liberals both see themselves as acting morally, but both have different family-model metaphors. Conservative beliefs are based on the model emphasizing the "Strict Father." Liberal beliefs are based on the model of the "Nurturant Parent."

These useful insights are getting increasing attention and these patterns are worth consideration. In reality, polls tell us that in the USA today, there's an almost equal number of Conservatives and Liberals, millions of whom -- on both sides and in between -- are honest hardworking people, living ordinary everyday lives, who generally agree on the society's goals (peace and prosperity), but disagree about the means ... and priority (what gets top priority, what gets done first) and degree (what gets the most money, the most attention) and the mix.

"Voters vote their identities and their values far more than their self-interests," Lakoff writes. His book makes many qualifications and notes many variations: "People are complicated. They are not all 100 percent conservatives or progressives. Everyone in this society has both the strict and nurturant models, either actively or passively...." However, Lakoff's ideas point out the usefulness of a central model, or prototype, as a reasonable way to see the patterns of differences in these two contrasting attitudes and worldviews.