What is wrong with our country and political process that there are so few legit candidates for President across the board?
I don't think politics is any more corrupt now than it was in the past, in fact, I think it's prolly a little less corrupt because it's so hard to keep information secret these days. And I think that's the 1st answer to your question. Few knew that FDR was handicapped or that Kennedy and Johnson were humping most every woman they wanted to. And Nixon prolly would have gotten away with Watergate had the FBI not thought he was becoming a little too dangerous. Today there are no illusions, so it's harder for politicians to maintain that mystique that they'd so like to maintain.
The second reason is because there is so much more party conformity than there used to be, especially with Pubs, and candidates who just spew their parties' positions are less interesting and less highly thought of. Just look at the Senate composition. Gone are folks like Hatfield, Packwood, Rudman, Cohen, Snowe, Matthias, Warner, Jeffords, Specter, Lugar, Chafee, Mack and Domenici. Collins might be the only 1 left who might cross a party line on a vote, and the Dems aren't much better. And the environment is so poisonous and polarized that all they do is look for soundbites to zing the other party, and we even had a govt shutdown. Used to be you'd posture for a while, but at the end of the day you'd get some kind of compromise done - see Reagan and O'Neill. So today we're left with a bunch of candidates who aren't going to veer far from their party's platform.
A third reason might be cable news. I used to watch a few news shows, especially MTP when Russert was running it. And the networks sought to maintain a bit of even handedness. Now you largely have 2 networks who pretty much champion their champion's views. It's become distasteful and unwatchable unless you're catching Shields and Brooks on a Friday night. It's gotten to the point where I only listen to NPR and BBC and read news. It's much calmer that way.
A fourth reason might be because who TF would want to be president these days. The campaign season is so long, and every detail of your life has been scrutinized to death. And it used to be presidents were at least somewhat respected, even after Nixon. Now we hardly show any respect to our leaders and call them liars on the Senate floor. I used to think it'd be cool to be president, and now I shudder at the thought.
