I thought of that immediately after I wrote the comment. It would work -- if the department heads were of the same party. Perhaps each candidate could provide

I thought of that immediately after I wrote the comment. It would work -- if the department heads were of the same party. Perhaps each candidate could provide multiple choices for major posts and voters could choose which one they liked on election day. But it needs to be a single vote, and with a single clear leader at the top. Otherwise you'd have the old Presidential/Vice Presidential system where each could be of a different party. That's no good. That's just the deep state on steroids. Remember the purpose of the executive is that at some point voters require "single wringable neck" The problem is that the system is so ginormous that there's really no way one person can be responsible for it all. Oddly enough, the system was really still quite useful over the past several decades even when it was too big for one person to plausibly be in charge. This is because it provides the president as a guy you can blame when things go wrong. Our problems? It's all because of that guy! Get rid of him and see how well we do! So the real danger of the deep state isn't just a system run amok. It's rubbing people's faces in the fact that this whole "electing a president" thing is just so much bullshit. The specifics of the leaks or whether they're in the interest of the country or not? Not as important as the long-term damage to credibility the entire system suffers. As the system grows it's more and more evident the reason we are supposed to have a layered, federated system. If you can't have that single person anymore, you really no longer have an executive. If the president can't be the guy we blame for all this bad stuff, the Congress is ineffectual and the courts are jammed up, then where do we go for peaceful redress of our grievances?