Well, it's slightly different than a popularity contest, though Trump succeeding by being the first famous person has helped change things to popularity contest (the worse nadir than even Trump was all the people who demanded Dwayne Johnson run for President, without even realizing he's said in the past he is a Republican, which flat out said people only care as a popularity contest. [That had an extra benefit of "woke racism" because it was "well, he's a rich, famous, black/Samoan man, OF COURSE he'd be a Democrat" as well]. Shit, the popularity contest is so bad that even as Kanye West became a Nazi, he was still getting requests to run for President...and even after it's known he is, he'd probably get the nomination if he won just on popularity.

As far as the issues, it'll never happen because the people view politics as their sports team and don't care about the issues, it's THEIR TEAM so it doesn't matter.