I feel like the most salient signature of a "political answer" is not so much necessarily an attempt to deceive, but more specifically an attempt to capture the "greatest common denominator" of responses that would be acceptable to the present audience. Which, especially on a divisive question, or with a divided elecorate, will usually amount to saying nothing at all.

And it seems like, so long as politicians are in the business of garnering votes from a divided public (as well as within any context that resembles this scenario), there is precisely zero chance of this behavior changing.

Honestly, what's starting to seem like the best option to me, is to do away with elections entirely, and instead, we would have some sort of a raffle, whereby people are elected at random, as long as they've submitted their names, and passed some sort of curriculum, like a civics exam or degree. This would largely take money out of politics, would probably improve political discourse, and would allow the elected body to more probabalistically represent the electorate, not just the ones with enough privilege to run for office.