The lower tiers vote for the higher tiers, and anyone can join government.
As far as your concern, there's a reason the government in china actually works, vs the US that stagnates for decades.
Only actually qualified people have power. You prove yourself over years. Xi, for example, has a doctorate and decades of proven experience; and that was after winning his external elections.
to compare to to western democracy, you don't vote for prime minister, the people you voted for votes for prime minister. Just add a few layers with publicly auditable and contestable elections.
Obama was completely unknown before he ran for president, with absolutely zero national air time or accomplishments.
The very foundation of your theory fails at the starting line. Name recognition isn't important. Americans can't name their own senators, much less random fox news featured senator number 41.
And this isn't sports. That's the problem, people treating it like sports.
Parties should be unconstitutional. Especially for president, but since we're not there yet and won't be until after the collapse, we should still not vote based on team. Vote blue no matter who got us Biden and trump. Its a terribly stupid, objectively fascist strategy that's doomed to fail if not applied to fascist voters.