In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals.
Everyone from left to right should be able to agree on what the US stands for. How one gets there is what people argue about.
This is hardly unique.
> In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals
The world's oldest (Britain, Iceland) and largest (India, America) democracies have people on their currencies.
Democracies are a human institution. It's dangerous to forget that.
Since the founding we’ve changed to direct elections in the senate.
Many states have passed faithless elector laws for the electoral college and 17 states (or 209 electoral votes) have passed the national popular vote law.
Sure, you could even bring a national voting system, but it wouldn't make it any less of a republic because of the outsized influence that the sub one percent of people have.