politicians are born or made?

I want to say "neither," but what I'm leaning towards falls under the "made" category, so... I believe the times make the man (or woman, as the case may be). A person could have aspirations of being a politician, and they may have the chops, but the times and overall tone of the country dictates their acceptance. Take Obama for example: Great speaker, smart, charismatic, but has the least amount of political experience of any President save George Washington. He would have never been able to pull off what he did had it been some years ago, and I'm not even speaking of the race factor. When the public is ready for change, they usually rally around a politician. I say it's about 50/50 here: the politician his/herself, and the tone of the public. I'm not sure you can transform yourself into a widely likeable character. Look at how many people try and fail miserably in an industry like entertainment alone. Now, their music/movies/art/etc may be very good, but if it's not popular - if it's not what the country's feeling at that juncture - they're as good as broke. A good politician can transform into what the public wants. But on the downside of that, they're not really a "good" politician if they're just giving you what you want. Unfortunately, a "good" politician is little more than a charasmatic liar on most levels. For starters, they couldn't rightly tell you anything you don't want to hear, so most of their time - especially during campaigns - is strictly pandering to the public. Most politicians don't even try to change public opinion. They simply cater more to people with whom they already have a mutual understanding. But ultimately, it's the public who makes the final call on whether they're good enough to take office. It's a dirty game and I'm sure most would rather be lucky than good.

I think most of them are made by the circumstances in their life. The only one I think was a born politician was Bill Clinton. Nobody, but nobody worked a crowd with the ease of that guy. He was a natural.

I say both. There are born politicians who are natural born leaders but there are also made politicians(I think the majority of them are made). The made ones are just puppets who follow the orders of the rich ones(Rothschilds comes to mind).