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Likely an archaic institution, the Electoral College still represents the founders' fear of the passions of the people — both the intensity of some, and the indifference of others.

They had two visions: that representatives would make the law, and that these representatives would not have politics as a profession.

The founders saw civil society — business, farms, churches and so on — as ultimately more important than the state, and they saw excessive political passion as misplaced.

First, it took away from the private pursuits they so valued, and it tended to make political life more important than it should be.

Second, they feared that ordinary men (women were excluded) might be elected as representatives at various levels.

They tried to shape representative democracy with standards they considered prudent — paralleling the values of their own social class, where private pursuits predominated and public affairs were a burdensome duty.

Of course it was the founders who created political parties soon after the founding. The property requirements dissolved fairly quickly, the idea that state houses would elect senators went away, and the ideological passions and love of scandal emerged. 

The first was to generate and offer potential leaders for election at all levels.

The second was to serve as a means of mediation between the public — for multiple classes, from the wealthy to the poor — and the state.

The party bosses did not have visions of redemption or apocalypse. They were what the founders didn't want: professional politicians, not necessarily holding office themselves but overseeing the selection of those who would.

This was a system made for corruption, of course, and it violated the founders' vision, but it also fulfilled that vision in a way. The party bosses' power resided in building coalitions that they could serve.

The system was corrupt, but it produced leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as some less illustrious people.

Starting in 1972, following Richard Nixon's presidency, the United States shifted away from a system of political bosses. This was achieved by broadly expanding primaries at all levels. Rather than bosses selecting candidates and controlling them, direct democratic elections were used for candidate selection. Since the bosses didn't select candidates, the candidates were beholden to the voters rather than the bosses. Each election year, the voters would select the candidates and then select the officeholder. Over time, the power of the political machine was broken and replaced by a series of elections. The founders did not want this level of democracy, but neither did they explicitly want the party boss.

The first was that the importance of money in the political process surged.

Corruption moved from favors for bosses to special treatment of fundraisers, but it was still there.

First, a primary system for the presidency is fiendishly expensive simply because delivering the message to the public in 50 states costs a fortune. Second, given the stakes, the desire to influence government is difficult to curb.

The second unintended consequence was that it institutionalized political polarization.

The founders designed politics to be less important than private life, and in the competition on Election Tuesday, private life tends to win, particularly in off-year elections and primaries.

in the primaries, only two types of candidates win. One is the extremely well funded — and the passion of the wings make funding for them even more important. The other is the ideologically committed.

All of this applies equally to elections to the House and Senate. It has been said that there has never been less bipartisanship than there is now. I don't know if that is true, but it is certainly the case that the penalties for collaboration with the other party, or for moving to the center, are extremely high.

This is not meant to romanticize the bosses. We are, on the whole, better off without them, and we can't resurrect them. I am trying to explain why our elections have become so long, why they cost so much money, and why the wings of the parties get to define agendas and legislative and executive behavior.

There has been a long struggle between the founders' vision of how politics should work and the reality of the process.

The political parties emerged against the founders' intentions, because political organization beyond the elite followed from the logic of the government. The rise of political bosses followed from the system, and simultaneously stabilized and corrupted it. The post-Watergate reforms changed the nature of the corruption but also changed the texture of political life. The latter is the issue with which the United States is now struggling.

What is important is that the Russians believe this. That means that they believe that Western intelligence has the ability to destabilize Ukraine and potentially other countries in the Russian sphere of influence, or even Russia itself.

The Russians have raised the price of natural gas by 80 percent for Ukraine, and the International Monetary Fund's bailout of Ukrainian sovereign debt carries with it substantial social and economic pain.

There has been talk of action in Moldova from Transdniestria.

Action in the Baltics is possible; the Kremlin could encourage Russian minorities to go into the streets. But the Baltics are in NATO, and the response would be unpredictable

Militarily, the Russians are stronger than the Americans in their region.

The Americans do not want the Russians to exercise military options, because it would reveal the U.S. inability to mount a timely response. It would also reveal weaknesses in NATO.

The Germans do not want a little Cold War to break out.

The United States might create bilateral relations in the region, as I suggested would happen in due course, but for the moment, the Americans are not ready to act at all, let alone in a region where two powers -- Russia and Germany -- might oppose American action. 

Even assuming the Russian claim about U.S. influence via nongovernmental organizations is true, they have played that card and it will be difficult to play again as austerity takes hold.

This tells us something important on how the world works. I have laid out the weakness of both countries, but even in the face of this weakness, the Russians know that they cannot extract themselves from the crisis without American cooperation, and the United States understands that it will need to deal with the Russians and cannot simply impose an outcome as it sometimes did in the region in the 1990s.

On a matter of such significance to the Russians, failing to deal with the United States would be dangerous, and dealing with them first would be the best path to solving the problem.

Finally, the United States has global interests that the Russians can affect. Iran is the most obvious one. Thus, the Russians can link issues in Ukraine to issues in Iran to extract a better deal with the United States.

As sometimes happens in the United States, there is complex ideological and institutional diversity. The State Department and Defense Department rarely see anything the same way, and different offices of each have competing views, and then there is Congress. That makes the United States in some ways as difficult to deal with as the Europeans. But it also opens opportunities for manipulation in the course of the negotiation.

Russia suffered a massive reversal after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich fell. It acted not so much to reverse the defeat as to shape perceptions of its power.