I am pessimistic that the ineffectualness of Congress will ever be overcome. I'm also not sure it would be a good thing. The recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations are entitled to spend whatever they want to in campaign contributions, campaign ads, congressional bribery, means that the last vestige of a democratic legislature have been removed. We, the people, have voluntarily ceded our democracy to the corporations and it is very unlikely that they will voluntarily cede it back.
Sure, corporations, like other kinds of "persons", will have factions and non-intersecting interests. Their congress, the one that answers to them, the one that they own, the only one that exists, will still have wrangling and compromise. It may even appear, from time to time, that the public (those "persons" who are not corporations) interest coincides with one or the other corporate factions. But this will be ephemeral, and basically wrong. As it said in the IWW membership book, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common". Rather, "the human persons and the corporate persons have nothing in common".
What of the other branches of government? The currently constituted Supreme Court has long favored the interests of corporations. Since the (corporate) Congress needs to approve any nominations, it is unlikely that the judicial branch will change its stripes. I don't think we can look to them to look out for us. That leaves the President and the organs of bureaucracy. Actually, we might actually have an ally there. Someday. Not now. For all his inspirational rhetoric, our current president has never been nor claimed to be particularly progressive, nor, more importantly, daring. Some future president could, theoretically, defy the corporations and their Congress and re-establish a republic "for the people, etc". But not this one. He started his health care reform by convening the big corporate health care interests to get their "input" (what, in fact, might be acceptable).
No. We live in a corporatocracy. As always, some of us will learn how to live well. Others not so much. Some will convince themselves that the government is still a reflection of their interests. This will, never the less, be untrue.
