"For example, we believe in direct representation in voting for the president, the figure most capable of becoming a tyrant, not an executive, a belief which the founders strongly thought dangerous."

That's actually not quite true. The fiction of the electoral college was a product of slavery, allowing the 3/5's of a human standard for representation to be incorporated not only in the house of representatives, but also in the election of the president. It was a compromise, designed to insure that slave holding states had more than their fair share of representation in the election of the president. Prior to the Civil War, nearly all of the presidents came from slave holding states.

But, I agree that in the past six years we have seen the wholesale destruction of our constitutional safeguards. This destruction is not intended to allow a broadly popular demogague from becoming president, but to allow a corporately controlled government of the wealthy and by the wealthy to operate for the wealthy.