Yes, but. But the way we “sell” presidents. We use marketing to sell a president to the public. People learn about their presidential candidates primarily via the media. Television comes to mind. When it becomes a popularity contest, a skilled demagogue like Trump, a populist, can take advantage of widespread discontent among a significant portion of the electorate, and utilize those populist skills. Such a system can also be a “populist monster factory”. From that perspective, Hamilton was right. You have a system that permits populists, you’ll eventually get populists. When people vote for the office of the president, they may be under the illusion that this is somehow direct democracy, when it isn’t, but so far as permitting the rise of populists who may be poisonous to our body politic, the system we have both permits it, and via the selling of a president, marketing personalities, (and who’s better than Trump in marketing himself, stirring fear in his followers, making himself and his followers equal victims of a stacked corrupt system?), encourages it! Our system of marketing candidates encourages populism, makes it easy to attempt. Nothing in the way things work prevents a Donald Trump from appearing in highly stressful times, in times of culture wars, and acting the part of a successful demagogue.
So, yes, Hamilton was taking about direct democracy and the appearance of people like Trump. But we did not avoid the problems he feared, and at least part of the reason was the reasons I pointed out, IMO. One person, one vote, plus the selling of a president, of course can lead to a president like Trump.
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