I would be interested in what the voter/incumbent ratio is in those other democracies. I would be interested in their taxation model, and their services model. I would be interested if their leaders are directly elected or elector-elected. Obviously your two Senators cannot do everything that needs to get done, so are they going to appoint people to handle the local details? We would end up with massive cronyism with 6 years to wait to get rid of them...if we could.
I think the local governments are incompetent and poor because the lions share of the tax money is going to the Federal government. We could afford and feel entitled to the best people in our local governments if they were the ones controlling the dispersment of tax revenues. Last I heard, the pentagon could not account for a trillion dollars. Thats a lot of schools, hospitals, roads, and jobs that were lost.