Sadly, Ice-T, used a false dichotomy. We can hate the player and the game. And often should.
But you define the game too narrowly. The technical mechanism of the election to the presidency is indeed currently via the electoral college. That's one game.
One deeper game is mandate. If an election result is strong, the victor is seen as having a mandate to strongly pursue their agenda. See, for example, Bush's claim that his 3 million vote margin gave him political capital that he could spend as he pleased. [1]
A still-deeper game is around the rules of the system. We ended up with electors chosen by the states as a dodge around the problems created by slavery [2], and because framers weren't sure the general populace would have sufficient education and information to choose the president. But that didn't work well in practice, so after assorted changes mid-1800s we ended up with what we have now, pseudo-direct elections implemented through the existing system of electors. [3]
That's an obvious compromise chosen because nobody wanted to go to all the work of switching to fully direct elections. But we've had two failures this century. If Trump is a sufficiently bad president, I'm sure we'll change this. (E.g., imagine him starting a pointless war with North Korea that ends up with Seattle getting nuked. People would be very eager to Do Something, and the states could fix this without any federal changes.)
This is driven by a deeper level still. American government is "government of the people, by the people, for the people". We hire temp workers to take care of the details for us. Trump's job isn't to represent Trump. It's to represent us. All of us. And, I'd argue, the best part of all of us.
To the extent he fails at that, it's his fault and ours.
Sure. But the US right has become deeply partisan over the last couple of decades. As an example, 2008 was the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression. I was sure that would be big enough to shock them out of the usual D vs R game and into making the same sorts of broad, lasting reforms that have come out of previous crises. In retrospect, I was totally wrong.
The last time the Republicans won the popular vote for a non-incumbent president was George H. W. Bush in 1988. Whatever the intellectual merits of EC reform, there's just no way right now they'll give up the advantage the EC system gives them. Right now a Wyoming voter's opinion counts for 3.7 times what mine as a Californian does in the presidential race. (It also counts 67x what mine does in the Senate.)
So unless the Republican party collapses (which is not unlikely), it will take something bigger than the 2008 bust to get people willing to change the EC.
But you define the game too narrowly. The technical mechanism of the election to the presidency is indeed currently via the electoral college. That's one game.
One deeper game is mandate. If an election result is strong, the victor is seen as having a mandate to strongly pursue their agenda. See, for example, Bush's claim that his 3 million vote margin gave him political capital that he could spend as he pleased. [1]
A still-deeper game is around the rules of the system. We ended up with electors chosen by the states as a dodge around the problems created by slavery [2], and because framers weren't sure the general populace would have sufficient education and information to choose the president. But that didn't work well in practice, so after assorted changes mid-1800s we ended up with what we have now, pseudo-direct elections implemented through the existing system of electors. [3]
That's an obvious compromise chosen because nobody wanted to go to all the work of switching to fully direct elections. But we've had two failures this century. If Trump is a sufficiently bad president, I'm sure we'll change this. (E.g., imagine him starting a pointless war with North Korea that ends up with Seattle getting nuked. People would be very eager to Do Something, and the states could fix this without any federal changes.)
This is driven by a deeper level still. American government is "government of the people, by the people, for the people". We hire temp workers to take care of the details for us. Trump's job isn't to represent Trump. It's to represent us. All of us. And, I'd argue, the best part of all of us.
To the extent he fails at that, it's his fault and ours.
[1] http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Bush-claims-mandate-s...
[2] http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llfr&fileName=00...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_Stat...