The biggest issue of politics is that it is not seen as managing 100 million people but as stupid terms of left and right.
There’s no left when managing 100 million people There’s no right when managing 100 million people
There are 10000 different characteristics of each person and the ruler has to choose the right action for or against the right person. That is politics. It is not liberal, it is not authoritarian. An ideal ruler is liberal against one who’s liberal and authoritarian against one who’s authoritarian.
When we stop seeing politics in terms of these stupid terms, all will be solved!
It is not realistic to manage millions of people one by one though. Politics is about managing a collectivity, choosing sets of rules and strategies to implement them. So different programs will have different characteristics, for example socially liberal vs authoritarian, that make up ideologies.
Then overall a program or an ideology can be positioned on the left-right axis according to its tendency to be more progressive (left) or conservative (right). Of course it is only one characteristic for the general direction, who ever said it suffices to precusely describe a program?