Since Alexis de Tocqueville's seminal work on American democracy, no one has attempted to diagnose the current state of democracy in the United States. This book is a modest attempt to do such an update, based on both democratic theory and the author's actual practice in governing one city (Miami) for three terms. As with De Tocqueville, Suarez reports from his perspective as an immigrant, but also from the perspective of a trial lawyer, college professor and politician with half a century of being fully immersed in the American experience.