I wouldn't say it quite that way

Steve Landburg boils down democracy to this: "The theory of democracy (stripped down to bare essentials, and omitting all sorts of caveats that I could list but won't) is that the guy who gets more votes is the better guy."

I'd say that we need leaders, and that an Athenian democracy is not practical. So we let the people decide at regular intervals who should make the laws and run things from day to day. That doesn't mean the ones they pick are the better leaders, just that the people should have the right to decide who they want making the decisions. I think that's why public opinion was against removing Clinton from office, even though most people didn't think he was the "better guy" once he became a national embarrassment. They just didn't want their votes being set aside.

Landsberg goes on:

You might have a strong preference for one candidate over the other, but if you have an overriding preference for democracy ("Let the majority rule, even when I'm in the minority"), then you can stop worrying about miscounts. Surely there's not much difference between a world where Bush gets 3 more votes than Kerry and a world where Kerry gets 3 more votes than Bush. If Bush is the rightful president in one of those worlds, he's got to be darn close to rightful in the other.

I wouldn't say that that either. To paraphrase the Book of Mormon, most of the time the majority of the people choose what's right. If they consistenly choose wrong, the whole people suffer the consequences, so there's a self correcting effect. But if the majority are perverse and choose wrong long enough, the who society goes down the tubes. That's why Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others.