It sounds good, but maybe a little too good. I think political parties are yet another manifestation of our primate sociabilty.

When I envision an idyllic Congress of Independents, I see it as an unstable starting condition. Alliances of expediency will form, temporarily at first, but if they pay off, the alliance is reinforced and can grow into a party. At the same time, as the independents talk to one another, those with similar beliefs will gravitate towards each other, and as they talk about their beliefs, they'll iron out the differences to produce a shared ideology. Humans are joiners, and we tend to make adjustments necessary to fit into a group.

I also find myself wondering how a true independent could get elected in a representative democracy. It seems a bit of a paradox to talk about an independent who nevertheless represents the views and interests of his/her constituency. A representative of a group can't be too independent without losing support of the group. I'd expect an independent to reprsent only his/her interests, so in a sense what you may be describing is actually direct democracy, but one in which only a few people participate.

While I think parties may be inevitable, I still believe, as I long have, that parties tend to become the problem. We start groups to achieve some goal through the power of numbers, but over time, the group takes on a life of its own, and often eats its creators in the interests of ensuring its own survival.

It could be that any democratic system fosters creation of political parties, through the simple logic that numbers win elections. You win more often as a member of a party than an indepedent pursuing your own agenda, by helping others and being helped in return. That's why the self-styled "independents" in Congress usually end up joining a caucus and behaving like a party member. Strength in numbers.

If political parties are inevitable, yet detrimental in the long run to democracy, my first impulse is to look to the Founders for a lesson on checks-n-balances. After all, America's had political parties almost from our founding. Once again it looks like the Founders got there ahead of us, if my theory about the three natural divisions of the electorate holds true. We don't really need a third party, which usually ends up just a spoiler anyway. And a Congress of Independents won't last long, in my opinion. But what's been shown to work down through the years is playing the left and right off against the center. As long as organized parties don't come close to a majority, a strong center provides an anchor to keep us from straying too far to either side.

I'm not arguing against the idea of a Congress of Independents, in principle, because the idea is atractive (especially if I could be one of those independents representing my own interests!). I just have my doubts about whether it would work.