Boeing needed an airplane to compete with Airbus. They weren't going to spend billions designing a new model.
They decided to use their existing plane with bigger engines. To do that, the engines had to be placed more forward and higher. That causes the nose to go up faster when thrust is applied.
To assist the pilots with this issue, they created the MCAS safety system. But as it turns out, either it is too powerful, too suspect, or pilots are not trained well enough.
Chalk it off to design failure ? Good intentions gone bad ? Unintended consequences ?