Back in the 60s, a Soviet diplomat ran into an American diplomat on the sidelines of some conference.
"I want to congratulate you Americans", says the Soviet diplomat, "your propaganda is amazing, it's much better than ours".
"What do you mean?", replies the American. "We don't have propaganda?"
"See what I mean!"
Also, I think Italy actually has a hybrid system.
[1] yes governments were weak and were replaced often, but that's a feature, not a problem.
As each member of parliament must necessarily represent the biggest groups in their constituencies.
So a decent size group scattered across many dozens of constituencies into relatively tiny groups would simply never get taken seriously without a strong executive.
For example, non-residents, tourists, diplomats, etc..
Because each group certainly has some real interests in common.
In Netherland we have elections for "waterschappen" ("water council"), apparently our oldest governmental body and responsible managing surface water, dikes, etc. So obviously very important in a country like this, but I have no idea what the actual issues involved are, and yet I have to vote for these people.
No offense but if the idea of finding 5 candidates you can feel comfortable voting for is too much work, you shouldn't be voting.
Even if you could do both of those, will it hold up when the populist candidate loses and starts railing about how they have so much support, the best support, and the election was stolen from them by the elite-chosen sample?
You can be polite, and still be insane or evil (see: Brexit and all of the politicking and --from what I can tell-- outright lies that were sold to people). That whole process was mostly civil and polite, but not necessarily healthy.
Different in the sense that Trump remains extremely popular with Republican voters, independent of his actions. If Trump weren't so popular, his own party would have tossed him out long ago. They only grudgingly allowed him to become their leader in the first place because to oppose him meant almost certain defeat in their own next election.
The Electoral Judges in Brazil, are censoring actual facts, because despite being facts, they consider it "misinformation", it go so bad that a former supreme court judge of ours got censored for explaining something technical... Despite the fact our constitution explicitly bans any form of censorship. (ironically, as defense against US... our constitution promotes free speech to prevent CIA from subverting the country again).
Lets revisit this observation in 2024 when the next US Presidential election is held. Many localities have been electing people to oversee their local election process who are 2020 deniers, and who supported overturning Biden's win in order to keep Trump in office. I think 2024 could be interesting.