Well, for these people, it is a concept based in Faith. In that regard, they are closer to their Al Qaeda enemies than they could ever admit. They certainly would not share your assessment. To them, the proof that American government was a healthy and functioning entity was evidenced by the election of Bush and Cheney. In fact, this trend in American politics in the nineties toward conservatism was to them a realization of the rightness of their cause and of God's divine blessing. To this end, measures were taken by them with other useful tools like Karl Rove, who devised strategies to personally attack and defame the opposition, and Chuck Delay, who was instrumental in congressional gerrymandering in an attempt to make their continued dominance inevitable.
Thanks to their own all-encompassing incompetence, corruption, and hubris, they were overthrown. Therein lies the ultimate strength of this country, in my esteem. We are in fact a functioning democracy, and the American people do harbor both common sense and a deep belief in fairness.
That Barack Obama was elected is my argument with your hypothesis that we are anything but a real and healthily functioning representative democracy . And I hope you aren't cynical and jaded to the extent that you can't see the improvement.