Lamenting ( or cheering for) the death of democracy. NHPR

NHPR was on this depressing theme all day Saturday.  The were talking about "economical man" the theoretical man of the economics text books who does every thing for money.  The claimed that such a man would never bother to vote, because there is no money in it, and because his one vote won't count for much in the myriad of other votes.  They ragged on about this for a half an hour.  Depressing talk.
   Of course the entire concept is malarkey.  People don't vote 'cause there is money in it, they vote cause they believe in the cause.  It doesn't cost money to vote, and the trivial amount of time it takes is of little account.  I managed to vote for fifty years stopping at the polls on my way to work or on my way home from work.  Not a significant burden. People vote for either a candidate they like, for an ideology they like, or against a candidate or ideology they despise.  Except in the simple case of vote buying by party bosses, money is not the question.  Which means voting is not properly a subject of economics, or concepts like "economical man"
   And, American democracy has a good track record of selecting decent leadership.  For the great crises of American history, Revolution, Civil War, the two world wars,  our democracy  put forth good strong effective leaders, Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt. 
   We did better than Europe.  European leadership was monarchies, and the governments, even France and Britain, were staffed by the aristocracy.  They weren't very good at their jobs.  In the supreme crisis of 1914 they allowed events to drift into a terrible war, a war that wrecked all of Europe for good.  US democratically elected leadership knew enough to stay out of it, and once it became clear that we had to step in to prevent the bad guys from winning US leadership brought the united backing of a large industrialized country into battle, and in both world wars,  created the moral high ground, Wilson's 14 points, FDR's four freedoms.  "In war the moral is to the physical as three is to one," said Napoleon once upon a time.  US democratically elected leadership understood this where as European aristocratic leadership did not. 
   Churchill once said "Democracy is the worse form of government, except for all the others."   I like that.