Political junkies will rejoice Feb. 27 as Netflix releases the third season of “House of Cards” for binge-watching. Too bad the drama of intrigue, crime and corruption misses the truth about Washington, DC.

Don’t get me wrong: “House of Cards” is a great show — incredibly written, impeccably acted and giving the viewer a gritty, if somewhat exaggerated, sense of the action inside the Beltway.

And people are right to be angry at today’s corrupt politics. With so many problems today, why can’t the two sides get together to fix at least one of them?

But the real-life villain isn’t anything like the show’s anti-hero, Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, who combines the craftiness of a Machiavelli with the all-consuming ambition of a Caesar.

Sorry: Washington isn’t such a mess because bad people have ruined it. It’s well-meaning, not-so-bad guys at fault.

The truth is that the people in Washington are not actually all that bad. They’re just people, like anybody else — some good, some bad, most somewhere in between.

As I argue in my new book, “A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption,” the real roots of corruption have to do with the rules of the political game.

The Framers of the Constitution bequeathed us an ingenious system of checks and balances to control misbehavior, but it was only meant to handle limited federal powers. By growing government so far beyond that original vision, we’ve overrun their checks and balances.

In other words, the rules are broken, and we’re to blame.

Accordingly, even good people can end up doing corrupt things — just by doing what they’re “supposed” to.

Politics today is premised on an enormous conflict of interest. Members of Congress systematically exchange favorable public policy for donations, help in writing legislation, favors, cushy jobs after they leave office and more. And hardly anybody looks askance — it’s just how things work.

This is how we get corruption, though (almost?) none of our politicians are as avaricious or crafty as Frank Underwood.

Consider the average member of Congress — entirely unspectacular, fairly inoffensive, really just a time-server. He has oversight over some narrow policy domain, and so is lavished with campaign cash from interest groups and lobbied extensively.

His cousin gets offered a consulting gig, the charity his mom runs gets a big donation from some firm and when he leaves office he can cash in with a seven-figure job as a lobbyist.

What does he do in return? Simple: He tilts public policy in the direction of those who’ve helped him out along the way.

Not dramatically — just here or there, at the margins, as he is able.

There’s nothing exceptional about any of this — and that is exactly the problem. This is corruption that has been built into the system of government itself.

Talk to the average DC politico about all this, and all you’ll get back is a blank stare and bemused response: Why are you so upset? This is just the way things are done.

These small, seemingly innocuous transactions between lobbyists, interest groups, bureaucrats and politicians are repeated again and again, every day and on the smallest of issues. They add up to an intricate tangle of corrupt public policies.

Just about every politician is ensnared some way or another, so that each transaction reinforces all the others.

And it’s not a house of cards that could crumble at any moment. It’s a house of steel and concrete — heavily fortified and near-impossible to tear down.

And all this happens without a malevolent genius like Frank Underwood secretly pulling the strings. Terrible as Frank is, we’d be better off if guys like him were our only problem.

Then, it would only be a matter of law enforcement proving he’s a crook and throwing him in the clink.

It’s far harder when the laws themselves breed corruption.

So if you binge on “House of Cards” next weekend, remember: Politics in Washington isn’t as bad as it seems on the show; it’s much worse.

Jay Cost is a staff writer for The Weekly Standard. His new book is “A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.”