Definition:  Oligarchy:  a small group of people who together govern a nation or control an organization for their own purposes.            

          And this oligarchy is classic, not to take anything from Caroline, who seems to be a nice, intelligent, and – at least in her mind – well intentioned person.  But Caroline is part of the fabric woven of the all too frequent but extremely few select threads that for the past twenty years covers or smothers the political leadership of this democracy (?) and, with the election of Obama, will progress through the next four or eight years, but one may reasonably expect longer.            

          Consider all this and – without explanation why – the pattern it casts – 

Ex-PRESIDENT George H.W. Bush was the son of Prescott Bush, a SENATOR from Connecticut and a YALE man and member of the Skull and Bones secret society, and George H.W. is also a YALIE and Skull and Boneser.   And his son, PRESIDENT George W. Bush (AKA Dubya) the ex-GOVERNOR of Texas is also a YALIE and Skull and Boneser, as well as a HARVARD man, which gifts him double purchase here.  Dubya’s brother, Jeb, ex-GOVERNOR of Florida, is also – yep, you guessed it – a YALIE, and presumptively the next SENATOR from Florida, and who knows what will be his fate in 2012 or 2016, but one may well suspect a higher aspiration.  So much for beating the Bushes.            

          Now for the other side, or more accurately the second half of the pattern – 

Ex-PRESIDENT Bill Clinton is (yep!) a YALIE.  His wife, Hillary, a SENATOR of New York and to become our next SECRETARY OF STATE, matriculated at Wellesley (where she was President of the Young Republicans, ah well!) then went on to (yep! yep!) YALE and Bill. 

How did Ms. Clinton become SENATOR Clinton of New York?  No doubt about it, she satisfied the major prerequisite for office, to wit:  she had attained the thirty years age minimum.  But so had 52 percent of the population of the United States, making the raw odds against her getting the job approximately 156 million-to-one, but of course those odds were significantly decreased to only 10 million-to-one after contriving (as is the Clintons’ wont) New York state citizenship.  

And now comes Caroline Kennedy, daughter of PRESIDENT Jack Kennedy, a HARVARD man, and niece of SENATORS Robert and Ted Kennedy, both HARVARD men.  Caroline graduated from Wellesley, now part of HARVARD, and she aspires to be appointed SENATOR to replace Ms. Clinton upon her ascension to the cabinet.  It is interesting to note that Caroline never accepted her husband’s last name (Schlossberg) upon marriage.  Smart girl! 

Now this Kennedy faces odds similar to Ms. Clinton (setting aside the appointment aspect of the scenario) those of 156 million-to-one across the republic and 10 million-to-one if she is (?) a New York citizen.  Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and suppose she can lay claim to or arrange to be a New Yorker, and that among all New Yorkers over 30 she rates in the top ONE PERCENT in intelligence, character, talent and experience pertinent to the job.  That would place her in the very classy group of only 100,000 other abundantly qualified candidates.  The question now becomes just how many of these outstanding qualifiers will be considered, interviewed and vetted for the job?  Yes, of course I jest, as the situation demands.  Numbers be damned, the political odds appear to be no less than even that Ms. Kennedy gets to be yet another SENATOR Kennedy.            

          And now we have elected as our next PRESIDENT, Barak Obama, though of mixed race, also a HARVARD man, and so by the end of Obama’s reign we will have had twenty-four or twenty-eight years of this oligarchy, then to be succeeded by more Clintons, Kennedys, Bushes, Yalies and Harvardees?            

          Most of the electorate apparently fail to clearly see the pattern of this cloth or the possibility of the perils it presages for the Republic.  Many greet the odds defying re-emergence of favorite names with the enthusiasm they might have for a new tune on an old violin.  There are some, however, who view oligarchy as perhaps just beneath foreign invasion and domination as a danger to our democracy.              

          Do those of the oligarchy meet regularly cabal-like to conspire in further control of the nation’s destiny?  No, it’s unnecessary.  They apparently and perhaps even casually believe their dominance to be the natural order of things.            

          And that is the alarm to our democracy we can no longer afford to ignore.