I didn't say it was some kind of dictatorship. I do note, however, that the bulk of the EU executive is selected by an organization that is maximally disconnect

I didn't say it was some kind of dictatorship. I do note, however, that the bulk of the EU executive is selected by an organization that is maximally disconnected from the voting public. And this seems to be by design. Consider the situation described in TFA. Let's say you, as an EU citizen, wanted to change the makeup of the Commission to rectify this. You could vote for a new MEP, but this would have relatively little impact since the Parliament doesn't select most members of the Commission. You could vote for a new national government (assuming this was your highest-priority issue!), and then hope that the heads-of-state would appoint a new President. But this would not replace the remaining 26/27 Commission members. Finally, you could hope that your new government would appoint new Ministers to the CotEU. But the CotEU has many Ministers and a complex rotating presidency. The Council also has policy "configurations" in which different national ministers have varying degrees of influence. So in the worst case, it could take years for your new Ministers to reach a position where they could influence the composition of the Commission. Even if voters in many countries felt as you did, it might be very difficult to turn this into concrete changes the makeup of the Commission. It is hard not to see this indirection as the key design goal of this structure. And maybe in the end that's a good thing. TFA, however, makes me worry that it can facilitate some very bad outcomes.