Il politico

Further, a position with even a small amount of power over others
is attractive to men who want to wield power over others.

A rational man—a productive man with a high degree of self-esteem—will have no desire for such power; he has more interesting and rewarding things to do with his life (and he abhors slavery . . . of any kind).

But a man who has failed to set and reach productive goals, a man
who has never done anything worthwhile by his own standards, will
often seek to disguise his feelings of inadequacy by taking a position
of power in which he can experience the pseudo-self-esteem of telling others how to live their lives.

So government, by its very nature, tends to attract the worst of men, rather than the best, to its ranks

 Morris and Linda Tannehill, "The Market for Liberty"