Not long ago political scientists argued that the political party system essentially was overhauled once a generation, approximately every 40 years. This renovation of party politics was regarded as a crucial mechanism of democracy, its "mainsprings" according to Walter Dean Burnham. Today, as the 2012 elections loom the mainsprings seem broken, and public confidence in our major political institutions has reached unprecedented lows. To restore confidence and repair the damaged political system will require something less than a new constitution but something more than a few reforms around the edges, and I will suggest a few ways forward in this talk. lt;brgt;lt;brgt; Daniel Hellinger is Professor of Political Science at Webster University (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) and holds the Ph.D. from Rutgers University. His most recent books are Comparative Politics of Latin America: Democracy at Last? (Routledge, 2011) and Bolivarian Democracy in Venezuela: Participation, Politics and Culture (co-edited with David Smilde, Duke University, 2011). His Global Security Watch: Venezuela, will be published by Praeger Press in 2012. He also is coauthor of The Democratic Façade, a critical analysis of U.S. politics. Hellinger has been a Senior Research scholar at St. Antony's College, Oxford, the Central University of Venezuela, Shanghai Institute for Finance and Economics, and as a Fulbright scholar at the Universidad Católica in Valparaíso, Chile. He serves on the board for the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a Washington-based NGO that promotes better understanding between the United States and Latin America. Dan is an avid golfer and amateur musician, playing mandolin with two St. Louis area bands.