>Because you have honest and responsible politicians?

No it's actually the opposite -- by design, both parties are far too greedy and selfish and disorganized to do that on their own.

I might be tempted to agree with you if I didn't witness firsthand how business unifies with the one ruling party here in Russia.

Perhaps we can talk again about this in 5 years. I sincerely hope you are right, actually, but the realist in me begs to differ.

I'm interested to learn what exactly happened when businesses all fall in line with one ruling party in Russia. I can imagine the big businesses colluding with the government for some short-term gains, but a lot of the free press in the US has nothing to do with big businesses and it is impossible for me to imagine all of them falling in line with the government.

Also I don't see how pandering to the government is always a win-win situation for big businesses in the US. The tech companies have their own interests which do not always align with either political party.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the US Constitution certainly doesn't rely on the lousy assumption that all winning politicians will be honest and all private companies will be "responsible", by some definition of responsible. It's more about leveraging self-interest to preserve a check and balance at all levels so that not a single power runs wild.

With a single party in control of all branches, doesn't your idea of preserving checks and balances go out the window? If the goal were to preserve checks and balances, we wouldn't have seen high level politicians asking people to move to Georgia solely to vote in the Senate race. We also would have taken the time to do a real full audit of every ballot. No, politicians and big corporations like power unchecked and unbalanced.