Oddbean new post about login | logout It never fulfilled that purpose to start with. I believe the Madisonian government was designed specifically to shoot itself in the foot every time one part of it tried anything, at least somewhat. It was designed to fuck up so badly that it could barely succeed at hurting people. That is its true purpose, not to serve people, but to degenerate more slowly than most other governments.
Madison pitched every component as a counterbalance to other components in the system under perpetual tension. He used democracy as a counter to oligarchy and oligarchy as a counter to democracy. It wasn't the most perfect governance, which would be anarchic, but it was a slowed down governance that would see usurpations frequently stopped in their tracks, and occasionally corrected, despite the inevitable degeneration of government.