I sometimes fear that political scientists would like a world in which the people were more preoccupied with political matters than they are, whereas the Constitution was designed, I believe, by persons who did not believe in the primacy of politics, and who went to great and imaginative lengths to create a system that would harness the citizenry to responsibility without pretending that they were (or should be) as committed to public life in a democracy as were the aristocrats and monarchs they supplanted.

Philip Chase Bobbitt, Philip Chase Bobbitt - Refl…, loc. 302