I'm all for democracy, but I also realize that a well informed vote and an uninformed vote are equal and therein lies the problem. It's not really something that can be fixed within a true democracy.
At the end of the day, on most issues (obviously there are exceptions), the "informed" class is just guessing or following a particular ideology. Was NAFTA good for the average American? 20 years later economists still can't definitively answer that question!
Decisions based on educated guesses are always preferable to those based on emotion and sentiment.
edit: stop downvoting me based on emotion and sentiment!
Someone whose job it is to run the country should be much more informed than people who only make political decisions once every couple years for major policy decisions involving the whole country with ride ranging ramifications.
I think its the same argument communists make - that the USSR, China, Cuba, etc have all been failed states that never were what Marx and Lenin intended, and they devolved into totalitarian dictatorships rather than becoming the socialist paradise the ideological founders wanted.
In the context of republics, a similar argument stands. We should have representatives with empathic relations with their constituents going both ways - the people should be picking the best amongst themselves to rule, but most existent democracies have devolved into elites picking the leaders and voters having no relations whatsoever with their own leadership, which was supposed to be the entire point.