The problem with democracy is that it assumes that pleasing the people and governing well are the same thing. They are not. Take Bush’s tax cuts, for example: people love getting tax rebates. But that doesn’t change the fact that they have helped contribute to a huge budget deficit. Maybe they do stimulate the economy – but if they have, the change hasn’t been apparent, particularly as we head into what appears to be a rather deep recession.

I don’t know of any existing system that would perform better, however. I suppose it’s just the best we have until the next generation of political thinkers comes along. They won’t be in the US, though – these sorts of things are always the result – or cause – of a geographic shift in political power.