What we do think we know is that politics is a great way to bring out the irrationality in people.
Yes, and the irrationality comes in before the discussion even has a chance. In these kinds of discussions, almost without fail, people take their circumstances as a given, and then ask what set of policies would be optimal. The (mistaken) assumption being that their circumstances are immutable while policy is entirely malleable and controllable. The opposite is true. That is, we have the most control over our own situation, and the least control over public policy (effectively none).
Inevitably, people in different circumstances will have different preferences over policy outcomes, and so the discussion degenerates into people bickering about which set of policies is "best", i.e. everyone tells everyone else that their preferences are wrong (and then they try to rationalize their preferences in order to "prove" that they are the correct ones, and then arguments become soldiers and so on and so forth).
Virtually every single "debate" in politics is dissolved once one questions the assumption above. If we have almost no control over public policy, then is it even worth considering our preferences over them? To illustrate, a question like "should the government raise taxes?" is about as relevant as "should Jupiter be painted blue?" if I can do nothing to effect either case.
I propose that we turn politics on its side. Instead of asking "Given my circumstances, what policies are best?" we should ask "Given the current policies, what circumstances are best?". That is we should be engaging in is sociopolitical Munchkinism. We ought to be studying the sociopolitical system and taking advantage of its patterns and loopholes. The best political ideas are those that most improve the circumstances of a given person. There are many objective measures one could use to evaluate them. That would be the only way to have a rational discussion of politics.
we should ask "Given the current policies, what circumstances are best?".
I guess it's to be born in a powerful family of oligarchs, preferably ones that are not abusive to their children, as an intelligent non-asperger person who can learn how to play the game.
We ought to be studying the sociopolitical system and taking advantage of its patterns and loopholes.
Uhm... any useful reincarnation tips?
Actually, I like your idea. I am just not sure how big change could we make "merely" by studying the system and applying the advantages....
Politics as gymnastics for rationalists. No one one Less Wrong is quite sure why politics is a taboo topic or how things got to be that way. What we do think we know is that politics is a great way to bring out the irrationality in people. So why not take advantage of that and use politics as a way to measure rationality? Since politics brings out the most irrationality, it should provide the strongest signal. Since there aren't useful objective metrics of how a political discussion went, we'd have to use subjective judgements by neutral third-party raters, kind of like they do in gymnastics. (In the comment thread for this post, feel free to find fights that you have no dog in, improvise a rationality rubric, and grade participants according to your rubric... let's see how it goes.)
Be a sheep. This is probably the exact opposite of what you were taught in your high school civics class. But if my friend Jane is more intelligent, more informed, and less ideological than I am, it seems like voting however Jane is going to vote is a strict improvement over voting however I would naively. It also saves me time, and gives Jane an incentive to put even more time in to carefully considering political issues since she now controls two votes instead of one. Done on a large scale, this could provide an interesting twist on representative democracy. Imagine a directed graph where each node represents a person and an edge is directed from person A to person B if person A is auto-copying person B's votes. There's a government computer system where you can change the person you're auto-copying votes from at any time or override an auto-copied vote with your own personal guess about what's best for society. Other than that, it's direct democracy... all bills are put before all citizens to vote on. Problems this might solve: