I would say more a stroke of luck than a stroke of genius. The Electoral College was a compromise made late in the process of the Philadelphia Convention, and almost none of the Founding Fathers thought it was ideal.
Hamilton complained almost immediately, because he thought it could lead to the election of Adams over Washington through intrigue. Later in life, Madison favored an amendment providing for electors to be elected by district rather than by state, with the vote going to a joint ballot of both houses of Congress in the event of no majority. In 1816, Rufus King proposed an amendment for the President to be elected by national popular vote, but it did not pass Congress.
At the Convention, most delegates seemed to assume that, other than Washington, no one man would ever be able to garner the votes of a majority of the electors, and so the Electoral College would simply serve to nominate candidates for election by the House.
The Electoral College is not the product of the genius of the Founding Fathers. Instead, like much of our Constitution, it is the result of the series of compromises and bargains on which our Union is founded. Which is why we can’t just set it aside. The United States was not created by the fiat of a few smart men. It was created as a bargain between a group of sovereign states and their citizens, and mucking around with the Constitution goes back on that bargain.
excellent post...