Not to derail the conversation, what how good can a political system be if their too scared to bring something up for fear of the public when its in their own interests?

Seems like an extremely common political reaction to having to cause your voters hardship or annoyance. To name one easy example, you persistently see this reaction across all the economies of the EU regarding the on going economic crisis, whether it's regarding subsidies or spending cuts or social programs or retirement or immigration.

I'd argue there are exceptionally few political systems on the planet that deal with such well.

In democratic systems, we generally trust the people to know their own interests, and when they're wrong win them over with debate rather than ignoring them.

democracy is not having a referendum for each random decision or new law. It's electing (thus giving your consent) someone to unilaterally make changes for everybody else during a short time. This person has the responsibility to take the hard decisions that individually would not come around. ex, when death penalty was abolished in France, it was in opposition to the majority of french people. A few decades latter virtually everybody now agrees that's the best way of things and that it was a great decision. At the time it was a politically courageous enforcement.