It's an extreme case of Darwinian selection. The political rat race gets so efficient that it ends up selecting people whose only real skill is the political rat race. That is the point I wanted to see developed in its own diary - unlike the other failures of democracy listed in this diary, this seems to be a structural failure mode of a developed democracy. And I seem to recall that Alexis de Tocqueville may have predicted it, though I have not been able to google the reference.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes