I actually had a similar discussion the other day on facebook about democracy.

A person commented something to the effect of that if America elects bad leaders, then that's good because the people wanted it. I said in response that democracy for democracy's sake is pointless because the whole point of democracy is to have the most intelligent decisions possible made, and the assumption is that most of the time, the people know what's best for them.

But sometimes they don't, and that's why the most ideal (imo) governments are those governments designed to limit bad decisions from being made. It should be hard to get something bad done, at the expense of the ease at which good things could be done. That's why democracy and separation/division of power is a good concept, because the process of making a influential decision is much more difficult.

So what you said struck a chord and reminded me of my own thoughts:

So to me it looks like governments are always stupid. Best you can do is to limit their power, so they have less possibilities to be stupid.

Here's an interesting question: is Congress's ideal job to make intelligent laws that might not jive with the people necessarily, or to make dumb laws that do jive with the people?