My wife and I don’t go out to eat often, but when we do, we usually have no problem agreeing on a place to go. Yet oftentimes, the place we end up going isn’t the same place either of us individually thought of when we first decide to go out.

I am not interested in going to dinner with a great many people, and don’t feel the need to come to compromise with them on where I eat.

Had I been going by myself, I may have chosen Quiznos; had she, Thai Express may have been the destination. Instead, we discussed the issue until we agreed: Steak ‘n Shake.

What I’ve described is the essence of democracy: That a group of people discuss (whether explicitly or procedurally) issues and come to either consensus or compromise.

That doesn’t sound like our system, though. Take the current debates over health-care reform. Have a multitude of Americans been complaining about health-care costs for decades? Sure. And is our ratio of spending to results totally out of whack? Probably. But what’s going on in the halls of Congress isn’t limited to those questions… in fact, it may well be irrelevant to them.

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