US Presidents: Elected or Selected?

Do you agree with the notion captured in this picture?

Do Elections Matter?

Many sensible people have come to believe that elections no longer matter in the US.  Senators and congresspeople of both parties end up going with the flow, and despite President Obama's strenuous efforts to "fundamentally transform" our nation, he has carried on many of President Bush's policies.

Do Global Elites Select the US President?

But go a level deeper, and there are people who believe US presidents are chosen by global elite, Davos Men, Bilderberger types.  Was Barack Obama chosen and groomed from an early age?  Was Skull and Bones fratboy George W. Bush destined, even back then, to be president by sinister manipulators of the New World Order?

I think there may be some truth to such beliefs, but not it the way the conspiracy theorists imagine it.  No dimly-lit star chamber, where George Soros, the Koch Brothers, Alan Greenspan, Rupert Murdoch, Harvey Weinstein, David Geffen, Bill Gates, Middle-Eastern Sheiks, Asian billionaires, and European Rosicrucians sit around a polished oaken table the size of a football field and waft cigar smoke as an oblation to their gods Moloch and Mammon.

No, that's not how it happens.  I think its more of a consensus thing arrived at slowly and unofficially over the course of time.  Global elites meet with one another in various forums around the globe, from Davos to Aspen, for business and for pleasure, and they talk. 

Control the Information, Control the World

These are fabulously rich people who enjoy easy access to incredible power via private enterprise, academia and government.  They can steer events, make things happen, and they are largely above the law.  Most importantly, rich moguls control what is perhaps the most valuable asset of all: Information, via popular culture and the media. 

That is how I believe they choose our president.  Not through direct action, but through indirect influence.  Whoever frames the debate has already won it.

Let's Test the Theory...

George H.W. Bush had to be their choice in 1988.  He was seasoned, worldly and not prone to mistakes or wild-haired ideas.  Yet, Yet! Bill Clinton took him out in 1992.  How did that serve the goals of the shadowy lurkers?

In 2012, why did they make Mitt Romney take the fall for Barack Obama?  Romney is one of them!  (I can understand McCain garnering their thumbs down.)

Why is stone-cold Hillary Rodham Clinton still politically-viable?  Why does she continue on, like an old battleship taking on water, her hull riddled with enemy fire but miraculously still afloat?  Because people love her?  Really?  For what?  Her flat-metallic voice?  The Charles Manson stare?  Her stultifying, stentorian lectures?  She's not a crafty liar like her husband, and she's not even a particularly savvy politician, yet she endures.  The Davos men must love her.

So, it is an interesting theory that global elites pick our presidents, but it has plenty of holes.

My question to you is, do you believe our presidents are chosen by global elites?

If so, to what extent?*

* - If your answer is yes, please expound upon your theory, but save your proffered reasons for why they would do this.  That will be tomorrow's topic.