What happens to the game when the rules change? The old players need to learn new set of skills, or new players, who already have those skills, enter the game. Politics has its own set of skills, and if you leave Lady Luck out, not everybody is cut out to play this game. You need certain attributes to become a politician. You must have people skills, oratory, presence of mind, courage, ambition, stamina, charisma, guile and patience. Politicians needed these attributes before, as they need them now. So, what has changed in the rules?

Politics by all means is a spectator sport. You play against your opponent and people watch both. And winning is always important. That one rule hasn't changed. But there was a time when people wanted to win for others. Politics was about sacrifice, about altruism. Politics was struggle for the downtrodden, for the underprivileged, for the needy and the neglected. Politics was missionary work with a secular heart.

There was a time when politics attracted dedicated people, who were committed to the cause. They were mostly lawyers, bright men and women, who aspired for freedom and equality. They were educated, inspired, devoted and decisive. They coveted power to have a change, not a change to have power.

There was a time when politics had a profile. Politicians needed character and composure, knowledge and vision, at once popularity and singularity in the private domain of public life. There was a time when politics produced paradigms, which shifted from time to time under the leadership of politicians who were the products of their times.

In the United States, the May issue of Psychological Bulletin published a review that statistically summarises dozens of studies conducted over 50 years dealing with psychological differences related to leftwing and rightwing thinking. It was found that the likelihood of adopting conservative rather than liberal political opinions was significantly correlated with a sense of societal instability, fear of death, intolerance of ambiguity, need for closure, lower cognitive complexity and a sense of threat.

For example, the famous Adorno et al. volume on "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950), assumed that anti-Semitism and racial intolerance were consequences of faulty parenting styles and traumatic childhood experiences. The German psychologist Erich Jantsch in 1938 had described liberalism as morbid. Thus all beliefs have a partial basis in one's needs, fears and desires, including beliefs that form one's political ideology. It was found that liberals could be characterised on the basis of an overall profile as relatively disorganised, indecisive and perhaps overly drawn to ambiguity.

Politics has always been associated with a pathological process, and political behaviour has its psychogenesis. People are shaped by their experience, and upbringing takes its toll. The child learns his manners before he becomes man, and manners harden into mannerism in the course of time.

Robert Louis Stevenson was certain that politics was perhaps the only profession for which no preparation was thought necessary. But Albert Camus resented that those who had greatness within them did not go in for politics. According to Samuel Johnson, politics was nothing more than means of rising in the world. Former US President Ronald Reagan sort of explained why that was the case. He said, "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realise that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

That surely explains a lot about politics, particularly the characteristics, which put together the personality of a politician. That explains how he bends to the wind like the reed of grass, how greed is his creed and deception is his devotion, how he changes like a chameleon and winces like a wimp. It is no coincidence that the first and the second oldest professions on earth both require the protection of the musclemen. Because both professions achieve their goals by arousing their target audience, and both are likely to betray those who get emotionally involved with them.

While the oldest profession has remained constant, politics has changed from bad to worse. There was a time when politicians were calculating and selfish with an enlightened heart. They defeated their opponents, cheated, lied and stonewalled but the purpose was to win their causes, which carried at least the semblance of public good.

Perhaps that is where the rules have changed most, reducing politics from the sublime to the ridicule. If people don't have respect for the politicians, it's because people don't feel any connection with them. It's because people no longer understand why anyone would enter politics instead of going into some mischievous profession. In fact if you really look into it, present politics is mischief two times over. Once when politicians commit crimes, and again when they pretend that they are doing everything for a larger cause.

Since the end of World War II, more than a score of political aides in Japan have killed themselves, usually when seamy under-the-table deals became publicly tied to their bosses. One of Kakuei Tanaka's drivers killed himself during the Lockheed scandal of the 1970's. Ihei Aoki, one of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's closest aides and his chief fund-raiser, slit his wrists and hanged himself late last month, hours after Mr. Takeshita announced his plan to resign.

In other societies, corrupt politicians and their aides would testify, then write a book, sell the movie rights and make a million dollars. John Dean, an attorney in Nixon White House, wrote a book after the Watergate scandal. Nixon himself wrote memoirs, which sold in millions. But the best example of that is Hillary Clinton. She wrote her autobiography and one of the reasons why it sold like a hotcake was because readers believed she was going to throw light on some of her husband's extramarital affairs.

There was a time when the politicians made their societies as much as the societies also made them. It worked well and politics elevated both in the end. There was a time when politicians dreaded scandals, because that ruined them like water poured in salt. Don't get it wrong. Men had their vices back then as they have now. But there was a time when political ambition required a morality check, when man was held against his reputation, if not anything else.

If you ask me, that has been the biggest change of rule in politics. Look at the posters on the walls and the newspaper ads, congratulating and greeting national leaders. You will find an unknown face plugged at the bottom right corner, who is actually picking up the cost. He wants to become visible, because visibility brings recognition and recognition brings reputation. There was a time when it worked the other way around. Men built reputation first, which brought them recognition, which brought them in politics.

When the rules have changed so much, it leaves you wondering if the same game is still the same.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.