The people we should be looking to, at the Federal level, are Congress. But of course we all know how ineffectual they are. Feels like they might as well not even exist, sometimes. Though, there are some real structural reasons for their ineffectiveness:

I love the detailed reasoning you’ve given to your entire post, thank you. The one thing I would add to your reasoning here is gerrymandering, which protects districts and allows Members to become ever more extreme, leading to increasing gridlock.