Well, if I may nitpick, it's a federal republic rather than a democracy...

More to the point though, there was this study at Princeton U about the correlation between US government policy and popular opinion on a variety of subjects which found that public opinion correlates very poorly with government policy / legislation passed, but opinions among the very-rich correlate well. Can't remember the exact reference right now.

> and (mostly) obeys laws.

Oh, definitely not. It can well be argued that there is constant mass violation of the constitution. And regardless of this, the US is such a notorious outlaw on the international level that not only does it refuse to accept jurisdiction of the international criminal court, but has in fact threatened action against court staff if the court hears any case against it:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/15/us-threatens-internation...