We're so polarized that families are starting to hate each other based on their political views.

I think a successful government is one that ensures the highest level of education for the largest amount of people, spends $0 on international affairs until ALL domestic affairs (like poverty, healthcare, etc) are covered or at least miniscule as to affect less than 2% - unless a 'true' war is initiated i.e. we're physically attacked by a nation (not terrorists that are from a specific nation), and regime change 'just because' is not even a consideration.

I think a successful government would also give 0 kickbacks, deductions, and rewards to any specific business or industry (except perhaps food/farming as needed for weather/crop performance considerations as we all need to eat). Money and corporations should have 0 access to politicians.

The fact is if you look at a graph of politics over the past 100 years, and how often the people get policies enacted that are 'popular' vs how often the rich do it's basically a flatline for us, and a progressive diagonal for them.

Popularity has nothing to do w/ politics --until we get more 'popular' non-career politicians into D.C. BrandNewCongress is an interesting organization trying to do just that for both Republicans and Democrats. It's like if X-factor judges could be bought and some nazily person who can't sing at all wins instead of the popular vote. The show would be cancelled in a heartbeat. But that's how America is ran.

The whole point of representative democracy is to put a firewall between the "the masses" and decision-making, while allowing them some influence.

Historically, party and other elites have also largely controlled who was in a position to become a representative in the first place, although that stops working when the elites become completely out-of-touch with the electorate (hence Trump).