But in other ways, it is not. Too concentrated and you easily become technocratic or authoritarian, to unconcentrated and you lose the expression of civic will that emerges from elections that "build", so to speak, to national levels and allow amazing things to be done in democracies.

Personally, I'm a bigger fan of parliamentary democracies than presidential. I also believe a sore point for many towards democracy (particularly the idea that democracy is mob rule, or that votes are meaningless) is actually over "first past the post" voting rules. Luckily, we can make democracies better. It's purposely hard to change them, for good reason, but unlike other systems, they are flexible.

But, I think if you would rather have a system that is less democratic then that loss of democracy is a loss of freedom at the disproportionate expense of someone else. We call that undemocratic.