You know... there might just be something wrong with national elections besides the Electoral College

In 2015-2016 about 25 Republicans -- or maybe, more accurately, about 24 Republicans and Donald J. Trump -- staged a reality TV show to see who would be the Republican presidential nominee.

Look what that got us.

Well, he had experience in the one area that was apparently important to the process: He was a reality TV host.

The Democratic Party's first response to this national tragedy was to say -- hey, let's get our own reality TV host!

But Oprah said she wasn't interested.

So now, for 2020, the Democrats have given us something like 50 wannabes -- some of whom have already been voted off the island -- in an even more glitzy and frivolous game show format.

In my email this morning, and also on Facebook, are breathless inquiries: Who won last night?

Who will move on? Who will get the rose? Why don't we just add a phone number to call during the show to cast our votes for best snappy comeback? Or biggest burn?

Can we make this process any more trivial? Any more farcical?

And yet, somehow, the problem with our presidential election system is the Electoral College?

Really?

If you want a serious President, you need a serious process. A truly national leader can not be a hyper-partisan. He or she will have to try to appeal to everyone -- try to build a national consensus -- try to bring us together as a nation.

It can't happen, of course.

I mean, Lincoln couldn't get everyone behind him... even in the North.

Even George Washington was slandered, viciously, at least in his second term.

But they tried. They understood that their job was to lead a nation, not just a party, and certainly not just a wing or faction of that party.

Today, in 2019, We the People have apparently stopped looking for persons willing to undertake the thankless task of building a national consensus. Trying to build a national consensus is just too hard. Or maybe its boring. Instead, we're looking to pick our national leader in game shows.

The fault, dear readers, lies not in our stars, and not in our Constitution, but in ourselves.

We are better than this. We can do better than this. We must insist that our politicians do better than this.