It is clear that our Great Experiment has been functioning -- or malfunctioning -- unacceptably for some time, due in part to the exaggerated, fragmented demands of democratic distemper in a changing America.

I noted Barack Obama's formidable power as a transformational leader and partisan politician entering his second term as president. Now, I'd like to consider what America might look like when he leaves the White House.

We may have to ask ourselves a final, uncomfortable question: "How far can we pursue democratic ideals through limited, representative governance without succumbing to the inherent, destructive tendencies of democracy?"

We're exactly halfway through this series on "Barack Obama, Election 2012, and the Future of American Democracy." Let's take a look at the logic of my "dying" rhetoric in the previous eight discussions and where I'm going in the next eight posts.

In this series, I approach America as an organic system undergoing democratic alteration and degeneration and I pose important considerations as Obama America faces the transformational challenges of an adverse environment.

I have come to the disturbing suspicion that we may be drifting perilously away from the Great Experiment of American history. Anger, cynicism, extremism -- and a pernicious irrelevancy -- are taking their toll on our national democratic experiment.

Unfortunately, the American people seem to be stubbornly split into two camps about what we want America to mean and how we want America to work in a changing world.