i'm not sure i have any easy ideological or partisan solutions either. you will note in my posts i don't really promote any leftist agendas, i just love to pick apart the contradictions in conservative ones.

term limits is a good start. public funding of political campaigns is another;
or at least, some alternative to the inevitability of private interest influence. perhaps a system of blind funding could be instituted, where special interests could donate to a third party which would then deliver the cash to their designated candidate without telling him where it came from. this would allow special interests to support their candidates but would have no way of putting those candidates in their debt. it would certainly stop the practice of special interests cynically supporting politcal opponents simultaneously.

even your "draft", or some variation of it might be employed somehow. for example the press could be "taxed" by having them publish, free of charge, the platforms of all parties and candidates, all in a common format. i'm sure money and power would soon find ways to defeat all these tactics, but new ones could be devised as needed. i see that as the true job of government: keeping special interest money out of politics.

the point is that both business, government and politics attract the same personality type, the hard-chargin, type-a, careerist individual who thinks not in terms of service, or profession, but in terms of personal influence and power. this leader can be a great force for good, when coupled with a strong moral purpose, but men like that are very rare, in any profession. and even some of those are too often corrupted by expediency, or simply overwhelmed by circumstances.