Yes, I would say this aspect of the system does more-or-less what it is supposed to. It makes it nearly impossible for 3rd parties to rise up, which is a bad thing, but the 1st party candidates we’ve had (even Trump!) have been pretty reflective of party values, which are set at the grass-roots level. The bits that are broken are things like the ability of monied interests to influence the system through back doors, as well as the concentration of the media and consequent power of organizations like the disgusting Murdoch organization.
Our system is also maddeningly slow, but sometimes that too isn’t a bad thing - just look how quickly the UK broke itself because of one idiot trying to placate another idiot with an ad-hoc referendum. If Trump wins we’re all going to be exceedingly grateful for the inertia in the system.
Everyone hates the long US presidential election cycle, but without it we wouldn’t have had Obama, and Sanders wouldn’t have had a shot.
There are many things I envy in some other Western systems, for example PM Question Time in the UK, proportional representation in several countries, and the small ratio of constituents to representative in most of the parliamentary systems. Of these, the latter probably has the most impact on the legislative process, but I don’t see how to fix that in a country our size. (The UK, for example, has 1/5 our population and 650 MPs in the lower house. Do we want to grow Congress to 3000 members?)
