It's consistent with US representative democracy. Read through the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers, and you can't help but notice that they were as worried about the tyranny of mob rule as they were of the arbitrariness of monarchy - which was rather pointedly illustrated in the French Revolution just a few years later.

People are stupid, and generally don't know what is best for them, and the more of them you get together, the more likely they'll develop mass insanity. You need some kind of buffer to moderate the fickle will of the public.