All us WEIRD (western educated industrialized rich democratic) countries seem to spend a really embarrassing amount of time talking about the pointless minutiae surrounding our candidates for office and their personal lives.
We are also prone to backing very crap candidates based on personality, rhetoric, appearance ie: things that have nothing to do with being a good executive or legislator.
I think we should ban names from the election process and just have each party submit their ideas in writing and let people vote based on those submissions.
Proportional representation is pretty close. You still vote a specific politician, but the vote benefits everyone in that party. Basically this means that you really need to read what the party is trying to accomplish and pick the one you like the most. Then you’ll pick your favorite candidate in that party, and cast your vote.