Presidents

It has been said that for the past two hundred years this country has been led by members of an elitist, ruling class that does not represent the cultures, cares, ideals or wills of the people they govern. The amount of money needed to win political campaigns narrows the field of potential presidential candidates to a select few backed by wealthy families, people who have exploited this flaw in our political process to hold on to their power through succeeding generations.

With few exceptions, candidates are groomed from infancy to be completely dependent on and to protect the advantages and comforts of the insular world of wealth and influence that produces them. Most are educated in Ivy League preparatory schools and colleges and socialize almost completely within these environments. Their values and principles are in turn shaped by their peer group and long-established obligations to the dynasties that have supported them. Law schools callenge their mindsets of absolute right and wrong and realign their ethics to ones more "situationally specific and productive." Friends from the same background assume their positions within the ranks of corporate business and banking and establish invaluable allegiances for financing the political schemes and agendas of the privileged. The presidential candidate becomes an investment in the future perpetuation of the status quo: that those who have been in power stay in power.

Unless the American style and institution of presidential selection and election is completely overhauled, and its system of campaign financing effectively restructured and policed, the wealthy elite will continue to run things as they see fit and protect their interests, and the United States will remain a democracy in name only.

Jeffrey Wallace