Since the de-colonization spurt that began in 1946 in the Sudan and on the Indian subcontinent in 1947, there have been hundreds of attempts to make democratic politics endure and prevail. The track record of those attempts makes grim and depressing reading. While there have been almost as many explanations as observers, few have focused on what to me is truly the heart of the matter.

Ayi Kwa Armah, author of the profoundly moving and perspicacious novel, “The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born,” however is one. Armah, a Ghanaian novelist, pinpoints the awful truth that when you look closely at the failures in the developing world, colonialism, heightened ethnicity, religious strife and all the rest – while contributing factors – are not the decisive cause of failure to build a viable political system and nation.

Rather, the chief failure lies in the inability or unwillingness of the political elite to do what is in the nation’s best interest, not simply their own or their political base’s. It is precisely this failure of leadership that has destroyed functioning democratic systems in some countries and prevented their creation in others.

In our history, we have the monumental failure of political leadership in the 1850s that led to the greatest national trauma in our history, the Civil War. Many have seen the Civil War as a historical struggle between different ways of life, of military process writ large, or by an inevitable clash of the highest moral order. But, in fact, it was the failure of the political elites to work within the democratic framework already established to prevent the war and solve the basic question of slavery and stave off political decay.

So we Americans are not without political sin or bad examples. But where we were extraordinarily blessed was in the critical formative years from 1776 to 1783, in the early days of the Republic when basic decisions were made by the political leadership, which, however diminished by retrofitting contemporary values onto those leaders, saved the American democratic experience from being still born or the victim of infanticide by regional, ideological or personal whim.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others, despite their petty differences and jealousies, when it really mattered, put in the background their personal interests and aspects in order to form “a more perfect union.” As the father of his country, George Washington could have been elected president again and again, even president “for life” as so many African dictators have done. Thomas Jefferson or John Adams or Alexander Hamilton could have made decisions that could have split the early Republic into fragments or narrowed rather than broadened participation in, and commitment to, the idea of being “an American.”

We often forget that those formative years between 1776 and 1783 were fraught with danger. There was no guarantee that “America” as we know it, was designed to survive the growing pains of its birth. We pass over, far too lightly, the dangers of Shay’s and Whiskey rebellions, separatist tendencies, foreign intrigue and the threat of European war as well as the opportunity for the early presidents to grab more power and wealth at the nation’s expense and put centrifugal forces against the fragile unity of the nation.

The transition between the “no-party” first term of Washington and the emerging dual-party system (Federalists versus Republicans, later the Democrat-Republicans) was fraught with danger for the new nation.

As Professor Jean Yarbrough points out, the election of 1800 is a good case in point. With the House of Representatives deadlocked after 35 votes for president, Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, threw his support behind Thomas Jefferson, a Democrat Republican, the first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another in our history. This feat has seldom been duplicated in the majority of more than 150 countries in the world. A peaceful power transition remains one of the most important benchmarks of functioning democracy.

The “mild solution” of 1800 remains a true rarity.

So much of recent revisionist American history focuses on the shortcomings of our early democracy – slavery, property qualifications and denial of the vote for women – that we often overlook the enormous leap of political faith made during our early Republic and what an enduring beacon of political hope we truly created.

The early leaders of America may have been propertied white males with elitist attitudes, but luckily they were “The Beautiful Ones” when we needed them to be.

For the initial American political system, “The Beautiful Ones” were born and born at the right time.

It is a blessing we often forget but shouldn’t.

Chris Potholm is professor of government at Bowdoin College, president of a national polling company and a writer, analyst and speaker on Maine’s political scene. He can be reached at The Potholm Group, 182 Hildreth Road, Harpswell, Maine 04079 or by e-mail at [email protected].