We can expect every winner of a presidential election to claim a mandate — a command from the American people to carry out his or her policies. Joe Biden believed so when he pushed a mass of liberal laws through Congress in 2021. Donald Trump likewise insists that he now embodies the will of the people.

Mr. Biden won by four percentage points, Mr. Trump by less than two — hardly a full-throated endorsement for either of them. The back-and-forth about questionable mandates obscures a more important question about the way we select our presidents. How we respond — or fail to respond — will matter more to our future than the personalities and issues at the front of today’s politics.

Voters in this election had a choice between two presidents. One was Donald Trump, whose average approval rating during his first term was, according to Gallup, Inc., 41%. That’s the lowest of any president since Gallup began taking such data in the 1940s.

His opponent was Joe Biden, as represented by Kamala Harris in the aftermath of his withdrawal. Mr. Biden’s average approval rating at the end of October was, at 43%, only slightly higher than Mr. Trump’s, and also historically low.

Never in the history of public opinion polling have the American people had to choose between two such unpopular contenders for the presidency. Only a candidate like Biden/Harris could have lost to Donald Trump. Only one like Donald Trump could have come so close to losing against Biden/Harris.

Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer an explanation for this dilemma in their book, “How Democracies Die.” They reveal that political reforms and court rulings since the 1970s have weakened the “gatekeepers” in both political parties.  These are the professionals who had in the past maintained party discipline and kept weak candidates and extremists off the ballot.

The gate was now open to well-funded opportunists within and outside the parties to take control. Dante Chinni, at nbcnews.com on May 10, 2016, explained how this played out when Donald Trump took over the Republican Party in 2016. “…a close look at the numbers,” he said, “provides a lot of evidence that Trump didn’t win the party over so much as his supporters overran the primary process.”

A key number in this analysis is 42. That’s the percent of the vote that gave the nomination to Mr. Trump — well short of a majority. He won nevertheless for two reasons.

The first is that the establishment vote was split among several candidates, allowing Mr. Trump to win with less than a majority. Mr. Trump’s other ace was, according to Mr. Chinni, a flood of newcomers to that year’s primary. They overwhelmed the traditional vote and enabled Mr. Trump to seize control of a radically-changed Republican Party.

The Democratic Party establishment prevented a similar takeover by avowed socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary, as told in reports from publications like pbs.org and Politico in March of that year. Alarmed party leaders pressured the rest of the field to drop out and support Joe Biden, who went on to win the primary and the election. It was a victory of sorts for the establishment, but one that produced a weak candidate, due to the underlying defects in the primary election system for both parties.

The potential for week or extremist candidates to take control is one of them. Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt compare it to the way Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela rose to power. Unite America, at uniteamerica.org, explains in detail how the primary system locks most citizens out of the nominating process and produces candidates that don’t represent the average American. We can expect more weak, unpopular, and unethical presidents in the future if we don’t find a better way.

Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt advocate a return to the old system, with party bosses weeding out undesirable candidates. Unite America, on the other hand, favors open primaries that involve all voters from the start. It also advocates rank-choice balloting, which discourages extremism and polarization.

We’ll have to look beyond the candidates and issues of the day if we hope to have better choices in the future. The primary system is where everything starts in our elections. It’s the institution most in need of reform if we hope to preserve our democratic form of government.

Lowell Harp is a retired school psychologist who served school districts in Ogle County. His column runs periodically in The Ogle County Life. For previous articles, you can follow him on Facebook at http://fb.me/lowellharp.