I read somewhere how the reason democracy should be the preferred mode of government isn't because it is the best, but because it's the hardest for idiots to break. Trying to remember how it went ...

"A man in an autocracy has a problem with his leaders, he gets 100 guns, 1000 rounds of ammunition, gathers his friends together and overthrows the place. Businesses get burnt, people get killed, mass hysteria ... In a democracy, that same man knows all he has to do is get elected. But, he knows he can't get elected to the top job right away, first he has to prove himself, so he campaigns for a lesser position, say, Chief Executive of Sanitation. He spends six months, most of his (and all of his like-minded cronies) available funds, and burns so much energy in the effort to get the job, he doesn't have any to spare to raise any hell afterwards whether he gets it or not. At least a half-dozen cranks and soreheads have been defused, you only have to pay or deal with one of them, and you just MIGHT get some useful work out of him ... after all, we have engineers to make sure shit flows downhill, he can't screw THAT up, and maybe he'll learn something."

HE isn't the problem ... for pretty much the exact reason you gave. Anyone puts any effort into it, someone like this would turn whatever molehill they were pushing into Vesuvius about to pop. It's the chiseled-granite (insert descriptive perjorative of choice) buffalo-beaters you have to find an appropriate cliff to chase off of.