Is American Democracy Inherently Flawed?

The rot at the heart of the system lies with our institutions—and probably ourselves, too.

Osita Nwanevu of The New Republic and curator of The Democracy Essays sat down with Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare to debate first principles and discuss how their views of American democracy have shifted over the past five years. What follows is a lightly-edited transcript of the first half of their conversation. Part Two can be found here.

Osita: I think a …