The system is working exactly as it is meant to - it's the one we elected, put in place, and are all a part of. You seem to be defining the system as one where

The system is working exactly as it is meant to - it's the one we elected, put in place, and are all a part of. You seem to be defining the system as one where the government bends to the will of the people at every moment (true democracy), but the Founders never intended that to be the case for America. In fact, they knew democracy wouldn't scale from their own experiences and historical precedence, and purposely created a Constitutional Republic, to protect us from that possibility. True democracies, almost by default, end up in mob rule and tyrannizing the minority. I'm not sure you want that. Now, the reason why the Snowden revelation is significant is because the constitution is directly being violated (namely the 4th amendment, Bill of Rights). It could be argued that some of the problems you listed are also violations of the constitution (namely campaign contributions and corporations being defined as people), and I would probably agree with you, but we can't just throw it all away because it makes us unhappy. I'm optimistic because the constitution has been violated throughout the history of this country many times before, and the result has always been reversion to the mean (either through a constitutional amendment or the violating act became irrelevant over time). Ironically, two of my favorite presidents - Lincoln and Obama - were two of the biggest violators. Hopefully, we've learned our lesson that the candidate's promises matter less than the era they come into and the system they represent.