Sure, you can make a living at politics, but you can genuinely solve some problems including sometimes making a living with philosophy. With that said, I begin this article. Thinking instead of “being slick and avoiding thinking” is always the way to go, but who in this world is evolved enough to immediately admit that?
I can honestly give this answer, and give it plainly: The genuine philosopher that lives their philosophy rationally. The politician who lives their politics is too busy being “slick”, machine like and avoiding any deep thought about what life really, really is usually.
Sure, that seems like a blanket statement, but I speak from reality. Philosophers tackle the genuinely tough questions and answers when called upon to do so. Politicians just scream in many different ways (but they never actually do, they just create commissions and bureaucracies to “do it”): “I will deal with it when elected!” and then when they are elected, unless they have morality and rationality, everything is power and bureaucracy determined instead of genuine and effective immediate philosophically realistic actions being taken and when I speak of or write of immediately rational action based upon a genuine philosophy, I am not speaking or writing about “being a vigilante” or anything of that sort. I am writing and speaking about taking rational, planned out, disciplined action on problems that is workable genuinely. So, I repeat this answer in full context, without mincing blows:
The genuine philosopher that lives their philosophy rationally. The politician who lives their politics is too busy being “slick”, machine like and avoiding any deep thought about what life really, really is usually. Also, the politician cares what people and political polls think and not so much about reality and doing something genuinely rational to help people live better realities and lives, really.
“I will deal with it when I am elected!” is too easy a way out of mediocrity and poverty of not being in office, realistic solutions are the hardest yet most effective way into greatness and really doing something to help everyone including yourself if you have a rational and genuinely integrated philosophy that works for genuine everlasting working good instead of the immediate enrichment of “being elected” or “getting into office”.
Thinking is the hardest work on earth when rationally done, and followed up with the actions to genuinely back it all up. Politics or the hare/rabbit, or philosophy, the greatest tortoise/turtle that ever lived. I use that metaphorical story of the “tortoise and the hare” because that old folk tale shows the literal nature of politics versus philosophy anyway. Only rational process then great results are sacred, everything else is nothing/trash.