While we attribute big advances in technology to the work of scientists and engineers, it happens that those same people are also responsible for advances in human governance. From the writing of the Magna Carta to the Icelandic Constitution to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, we owe whatever freedoms we have from despotism to people with an engineering mindset. Systems that deliver liberty have come from those who were able to step back, define the problem, and then dispassionately and objectively set out to write specifications - textual engineering drawings if you will - that define structures that preclude known sources of failure. In this case, "failure" usually means accumulation of excessive power by one person.
That is engineering.
Engineers, and those who have an engineering mindset, tend to understand the role of constraints in systems. They understand the tendency of systems to fail in specific ways if constraints are not properly engineered. A system of checks and balances is engineered to prevent the consequences of the built-in tendency of power to corrupt. It's no coincidence that Jefferson and Washington and Franklin et al were engineers, even though the term was not widely used in their day.
Politicians have learned how to play electorates with instantly-provoked passion about fictional distinctions such as right-vs-left, Democrat-vs-Republican, libertarian-vs-governed. Those political passions have repeatedly led us into wars, depressions, and generally avoidable misery. It's time for an end to bumper-sticker politics and demagoguery. It's time to end the practice of campaigning. Optimocracy has a tendency to diffuse emotional appeals and to limit the effectiveness of aggressive campaigning, because every voter by definition knows the complexities of the issues in the area where she or he is entitled to vote.