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So, a significant chunk of the founders were very skeptical of democracy and saw the risks of demagoguery. Their answer unfortunately tended to be to let the rich run things, because rich people (like themselves) would be more likely to be public minded and not selfish. That’s also, one might say, why the president has as much power as is allocated to that office independent of the legislature - initially, some wanted a king - and why the senate has more power than the house, and senators were not originally determined by popular election. The 17th amendment was passed in 1913.
They made a few other mistakes, too. Although some people (notably including Washington) saw the threat of political parties (which might in fact be an inevitable aspect of democracy), they also thought that the self interest of office holders would be to their office - president vs house vs senate vs judiciary, federal vs state governments - and did not foresee that people would instead find their self interest in their party, which would coordinate across all of those boundaries.
They also carried the enlightenment ideal of people being rational self interested actors who could deliberate and put aside self interest for the good of the country. Adam Smith himself said as much.
It comes down to selfishness versus tribalism versus what David Singer calls the expanding circle of inclusion (family, tribe, city, nation, humanity, ecosystem).