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.
This is the idea behind direct ballot measures. Instead of working through representatives, just let people make actual decisions. Of course, there are problems with it. You wind up looking at a ballot with 10 different bond measures on it as if you’re in any position to decide on the budgets for 6 different agencies. And all the voter guides scream contradictory things at you from the pro/con positions, leaving you thinking “gee, maybe politician is actually a profession after all?”