A healthy republic would have very boring elections. Because the local apparatuses of power would have developed such a strong upward populist consensus on who ought to be leading the executive office that there would be a landslide victory come election day.
The splitting up of the population into two warring factions by the media turns our elections into team sports, where it's always a close race (this is better for ratings) and it ensures that no real issues of substance are allowed to be discussed.
The only way for an "outsider" to break into this system, was for him to be a TV star. The TV star knows how to manipulate the stories and the news headlines. The only way to conquer a highly-televised society is to conquer television.