If you look around a bit you'll find a lot of people who are rather bearish on democracy as practised in the first world west - professional politicians with no real world experience, being voted in by the cynical, uninformed masses, propagandised by bought and paid for mass media. Democracy has collided with the middle class and a free press concerned only with their own interests and come off second best - bitter, entrenched political paralysis at best. Like unions, it was a wonderful idea at the time, but now the cure is basically worse than the disease.

Frankly, the age of democracy is over, and we now have the age of the permanent civil service. The good news is, it is almost certainly an improvement. China, Japan and Singapore are run exclusively by their civil services (democracy in the latter two is an irrelevant sideshow), and they are run much better than most western countries, or at least with more long term strategy. In fact, pretty much everything wrong with Japan can be blamed on the idiot government trying to save face by not admitting reality. The USA would be pretty well served, IMO, by taking control of budget away from congress and giving it to - well, almost anyone. The GAO, maybe. The Fed, the SEC, the commerce dept, anyone, so long as they're not elected. Being accountable to the electorate turns out to be the worst idea ever for people who are actually trying to do their jobs. It means never being able to admit you're wrong.

I don't mind if they keep parliament/congress around for show but they're going to go the way of the Queen of England - a figurehead, kind of a sounding board for the people, a super-ombudsman. A hundred years from now we're going to look back and wonder how we ever could have been so mad to think that giving politicians the reigns of power could ever have been a good idea.