I think the mechanism is: it makes you surrounded by corrupt people and sycophants, which in turn over time corrupts you.

Lord Acton's maxim is "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The dumbed down paraphrases lose most of the insight. It's a little masterpiece of the English language, and as you note, who or what exactly is being corrupted, absolutely or otherwise, is intentionally underspecified.