How does the American political process demonstrate the challenges of democracy?

I take it that you are asking how the US political process shows how it is challenging to have democracy more than it shows how it is good or beneficial to have democracy.  If so, I would say that our political process shows this because it shows how hard it is to get the majority of the people to do what is good for the whole country in the long term, rather than what is...

I take it that you are asking how the US political process shows how it is challenging to have democracy more than it shows how it is good or beneficial to have democracy.  If so, I would say that our political process shows this because it shows how hard it is to get the majority of the people to do what is good for the whole country in the long term, rather than what is good for their own specific interests or what is good in the short term.

One way we can see this is in our ideas about Social Security and Medicare.  Clearly, we need to do something because these programs will not stay solvent for long if we keep on as we are.  However, there are too many people who do not want the programs changed because they are afraid of how the changes will affect them, personally.  They fear that they will lose benefits or have more of their income taxed.  Therefore, they are unwilling to support reforms that are needed so that the whole country can have these programs in the long term.

Another way in which we can see this is in our attitudes towards tax breaks and subsidies.  Almost everyone agrees that we give out too many of these breaks and subsidies that are unnecessary.  A prime example of this is how much we give in farm subsidies to farmers who really do not need to be subsidized.  However, people in farm states are not willing to give up their subsidies, thus making it hard for us to reduce our excessive government spending.  People, in this case, are putting their local interests ahead of the interests of the country.

Democracy relies on people acting in the long-term best interests of their entire country.  However, it is very difficult to get people to actually act in this way.  The fact that we have so many problems like this is evidence that our system shows how challenging it is to have democracy.