Another "Wrong Winner" in 2004?

[Nym90]

One argument in favor of the EC that has never made much sense to me is that the winner of the EC has greater geographic appeal. If you think about it, though, you have to have greater geographic appeal to win the popular vote. The most common way for one candidate to win the popular vote while the other wins the Electoral is for Candidate A to win the Electoral by winning many states (especially large states) by narrow margins, while losing to Candidate B in the popular vote because Candidate B won a lot of other states by large margins. But, hasn't Candidate B actually demonstrated more geographic appeal? Candidate B was at least competitive everywhere, whereas Candidate A had very little appeal in a lot of states. A good example of this was 1888, when Cleveland won the popular vote largely because he won by huge margins in the South, whereas Harrison won the Electoral because he won narrowly in many large Northern states. It seems to me that Cleveland had the greater geographic appeal, since he didn't get blown out in a entire region of the country like Harrison did.
The most logical argument in favor of the EC is federalism; that each state should have an individual voice in favor of selecting the President independent of what happens in any other state. Otherwise, it doesn't really make much sense to put so much emphasis on who wins each state, and ignore the margin of victory as the EC does. What makes states so special, as opposed to counties, cities, regions, etc.? Why isn't an EC-type system used by any of the states to elect their governor, giving a certain number of electoral votes to the winner in each county?

[Nym90]

But, I don't think the EC does require a broad base of support. It may look broad on a map which only shows who won and lost in each area and ignores the margin, but the candidate who wins the popular vote often did so because he didn't get blown out in as many places as the popular vote loser did. I guess what I'm trying to say is, what is the definition of broad geographic appeal? Does it demonstrate greater geographic appeal to win some states with 51% and lose some others with 40%, or to lose some with 49% and win some others with 60%? The Electoral College says the former candidate has more geographic appeal, but I don't agree with that. Why is looking at the number of states a candidate has carried the only valid way to look at the issue, rather than, say, the number of states in which he was within at least 5%, or the number in which he was within at least 10%, or some other arbitrary cutoff?