I was taught this lesson in high school when our school voted for a "colors court" and a "king and queen" every year, which was supposed to honor kids who gave service to the school community, since the sports kids already had trophies and letter sweaters. The kids elected to the colors court typically were members of the Student Council, a lot of the really smart kids or outstanding service-committee kids. Of course a few of the sports stars and cheerleaders got elected to it anyway.
Guess who always got elected king and queen? That's right: the quarterback and the head cheerleader, regardless of what they had NOT done as service to the community.
This phenomenon is one of the reasons the Founders did not want a popular democracy, and put their faith in a representative democracy. That was back when we had a monoculture with universally Christian values; and people used to read essays and the transcripts of speeches in black & wite newspapers to get political information. Now, it's all smoke and mirrors.
Yes. Our Founding Fathers were Brilliant.
Unfortunately, back in their time there was no photography, so the only likenesses of them are painted portraits with the grim, tight-lipped, rather creepy expressions that come from sitting too long in the artist’s portrait studio.
And ill-fitting false teeth that probably clicked noisily like dead bones when they spoke!
And creepy little spectacles.
:-)