No other major democracy - for that matter, no democracy at all that I know of, but I might be overlooking some - has elections for their main legislative body more than once every four years (as a general rule - more frequent elections may be possible in special cases if nobody holds a majority anymore, like we've seen so much in Israel lately).

Between that and the absurdly long campaigns, especially primary campaigns, the US is almost permanently in campaign mode. At least for people in the House, it's really the calendar that's forcing them to start obsessing over their next election almost as soon as they take their seats. Not coincidentally, senators have a bit more freedom to take the longer view and to cooperate across the aisle when people on the other side have good ideas - but then, the Senate can't do much, other than approve appointments, without the House approving it too.

And then obviously there's your first past the post election system that makes it virtually impossible for a third party to break through.

In short, if you want to see different politics, you'd have to throw the entire system in the trash can and start over... which obviously is never going to happen, so yeah.