We are a republic with more parties than two. It's no less a mess. Maybe once upon a time there were ideals, now it's just everyone being out to exploit the people/system.
Hence, we've been seeing impossible alliances (impossible because of clashing ideologies), parties pretending to clash but actually taking down a third party behind the scenes. And so on and so forth.
I guess most types of governance systems have more cons than pros at this time, but only because of the people who are constantly finding new avenues of exploiting them.
About Trump, yes, the gap is why he could run again. As to what he can or cannot do, anything is possible nowadays, even if the Constitution doesn't allow it. Our guys have been modifying ours , and Trump is their "old friend"
not that others don't read the same playbook.