Picking the electoral college as evidence of there being no perfect voting system is like trying to prove there is no such thing as a perfect leader by using the example of Pol Pot. Also if the electoral college was an intended mitigation to the problem of electing "someone who was hopelessly unsuited to the job", it's not clear that it ever prevented that from happening (any more than a popular vote would have).

"Perfect is the enemy of good", as the saying goes, so let me propose a thought experiment. What if the US kept its electoral college, but each state was required to allocate its electors in proportion to the relative vote share of the parties within that state (as closely as mathematically possible)? Of course this would require a constitutional amendment (or a hack like the NPVIC) but it's interesting to consider how this would change voting patterns, campaigns, results, and the other metrics by which a voting system is judged.