"If only our best and brightest would lead us (whether R or D) now it’s the most dreadful hateful ignorant racist people of America." The Intelligentsia, you mean? I guess that as a PhD student, I'd qualify as a member of that, but until quite recently, we were economically disenfranchised here.
That is very much changing, now, because self-employment is becoming an increasingly viable option, allowing us to bypass corporate obstructionism as we've sought financial independence, but entry into Politics takes time, even for those who desire it. Which, really, most of us probably don't.
At least not right now, in an America configured as it is. One major reason for this is one that Barack Obama brought up, after he was elected. He would never know the freedom to walk by himself, outside, ever again, because wherever he went, somewhere a would-be assassin would be waiting for him.
In a country with over 1/3 of a billion people, even under the best of circumstances, that's part of the price of power, because no matter how one governs, somebody is going to be murderously angry about it. It's a probability thing.
Like, why New Mexico could get away with not having a metal detector in its state capitol building, but California would be ill advised to do the same. As a group, we wouldn't handle a lifetime of that kind of limitation on our freedom of movement, very well. Nor would our relatives.
If what you want is a government run by the best and brightest, then in setting up your country, you should see that small is beautiful. Don't set up a vast empire. Create lots of little countries that stand together for mutual defense - an alliance, not a vast union.
Don't leave any one man with so much potentially abuseable power, that to wield it is to spend the rest of one's life looking over one's shoulder, and needing to worry about what somebody will try to do to one's children.
That won't just draw narcissists. It will tend to weed out everybody else. That's the problem, right now. Trump SHOULD be meeting with real opposition, right now, but he doesn't, because he is surrounded by people who aren't nearly enough of an improvement over him.