Isn't the United States too big, and its governing too far away from its Citizens?

 A reading and study of commentaries on the subject by David Hume and Thomas Jefferson.  Or...for the equivalent of a Cliff Notes summary you might want to watch Prof. Livingston's speech on C-SPAN (  http://www.c-span.org/video/?316075-1/ThomasJeffers   ) which would reduce what otherwise would take months of study to about an hour of video.

The general view of republican governance was one where size mattered, if you were going to have representative rule.  If you get too big, you lose representative responsiveness.  Jefferson's vision was one of additional republics being formed as both population and area grew, maintaining the people's control of government.  The republics would then band together in a Commonwealth for cooperative defense and trade.  Up until the Civil War, succession was often discussed and seen as a legitimate evolving action for growth.  It wasn't until Abraham Lincoln, reflecting the governmental philosophy of Thomas Hobbs, determined that the southern states could not secede and the "indivisible" term became the norm when speaking about the republic. Jefferson's view of multiple aligned republics being the future political unit disappeared.  The formation of the French Republic, the first modern large modern state republic, looking to the individual as the political unit set the example.

No one comments on the mutually exclusive concepts of republican government as laid out by Jefferson and the one by Lincoln (following the Hobbs model), and yet the significance and effects of this clash on our lives is long standing and enormous. The two approaches are incompatible, as Livingstone states.

How does this lead to a loss of control of our government?

At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the House of Representatives elected one Representative for every 30,000 people.  But in 1911 the number of Representatives was capped at 435.  Now, there is one Representative for every 720,000 people.  If this ratio were applied to the original 13 states, the House would be composed of 5 members, and 8 states would have no representatives at all. On the other hand, to keep the same 30,000 to 1 ratio today, the House would have 10,500 members.

Until 1914 the Legislature of each state selected and voted on the Senators to serve in the Washington, D. C. national Senate. Subsequently, our "elected" Senators are selected by direct voting, which no longer is guaranteed to reflect the political stance of their subject state, but by their ability to be attractive to the voters, which is directly affected by the amount of money they can negotiate for from very rich and opinionated "donors."  Those are who your Senators see as deserving of allegiance, not the voters' political and personal wants and desires., regardless of what the political ads or speeches say!

 The republican view of governmental responsiveness to citizens as well as to the rule of law has been lost.

Is it any surprise that our "elected" officials and bureaucrats that have never met more voters than they have bureaucrats do not have any instinct... any conscience...

to suggest that they owe any "allegiance," "care," or "oath of office" obligation to those citizens in the rest of the country?  Is it any surprise that many of them see "us" as the enemy?

Distance does NOT make the heart or the allegiance grow fonder, and almost inevitably leads to disrespect and betrayal!