The midterm election campaign now approaching the home stretch has brought with it striking but fairly empty calls to action--from the Tea Party frenzy over fiscal virtue to a president exhorting his base with the banal promise of "moving America forward." But this and all the other lamentable features of our democracy, it is worth stressing, are nothing new. Many of those eligible to vote don't, and the percentage of no-shows tends to be significantly higher than in other long-established democracies. Voters don't know much. Though two-thirds of those surveyed by the Quinnipiac University Poll...