One reason, I believe, is that most American's do not actually have an understanding of civics—at all. Politicians have adapted by learning to operate in an enviroment which requires them to explicitly represent the constituency without rational thought. It's not like politicians actually sit down and discuss issues with each other. They merely say what they need to say, in a public form, to satisfy the constituency who supports them. Watch CSPAN for 10 minutes and you see that they aren't actually taking to anyone. No discussion can be had, because there is actually no conversation going on at all.
So when a politician "flip flops" or "lies", the public becomes even more irate. But the politicians are simply doing the only thing they can in an environment where there is no understanding of civics.
The amount of money in politics definitely contributes to the problem, but the people actually need to collectively decide what they want politicians to do—do they want them to merely be responsive or actually try to move forward? The latter is extremely hard to imagine in a world with such anger and distrust already.
Corruption, wars, elected officials who are criminals, illegal immigration, rampant graft, force feeding of political correctness, companies who throw away workers because globalization is "a good thing", and many many more.......
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