Reuters
At Yale, George W. Bush joined a
regular-guy fraternity.
Posted on 03/21/2004 3:20:33 AM PST by Pharmboy
THEIR youthful resumés sound remarkably similar: two young men with prominent pedigrees who prepped in New England, enrolled at the same college and joined the same secret society. As Jay Leno noted, the choices in the presidential election range all the way from a rich, white guy from Yale to a rich, white guy from Yale.
But in college there was a wide gulf between George W. Bush and John Kerry. As debates about civil rights and the Vietnam War roiled the campus, they went their separate ways. Nobody in those days talked about a division between red and blue America, but the cultural and political differences were starting to appear.True, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry both belonged to Skull and Bones their senior years, but they mostly traveled in separate circles. Mr. Bush, class of '68, was the president of DKE, a fraternity popular with jocks; Mr. Kerry, two years older, was in the Fence Club, the fraternity of choice for old-money families from New England.
Mr. Bush was the unpretentious Texan with a knack for making personal connections, but little overt interest in the politics of the 1960's. He focused on intramural sports. He soured on the Northeastern establishment his freshman year, when Yale's famously activist chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, brusquely informed him that his father had lost to "a better man" in the Senate race in Texas against Ralph Yarborough.
Reuters
At Yale, George W. Bush joined a
regular-guy fraternity.
Mr. Kerry fit right in with the Northeastern elite on and off campus. There was an assortment of future leaders at Yale in the 1960's - Joseph Lieberman, Howard Dean, George Pataki - but no one with the presidential air of Mr. Kerry. "There was never any question in my mind that John would be running for president," recalled one his roommates, Harvey Bundy, whose uncles were helping direct the war in Vietnam. "He was a natural leader. Rollie Osterweis, who coached the debaters, always said that Bill Buckley and John Kerry were the best speakers he'd ever worked with."
Bettmann/Corbis
John Kerry, here with Hubert Humphrey, joined a fraternity coveted by old-money families.
Besides leading the debate club, Mr. Kerry was establishing a political career, or what passed for it, at Yale. Because there was no student government, the outlet for his ambition was the Yale Political Union, a group divided into political parties that spent their time debating issues, arranging speeches by political celebrities and fighting over who got to be in charge of these less than awesome responsibilities.
Many Yalies, including Mr. Bush, sneered at the machinations of those political wannabes, but not Mr. Kerry. He became the leader of the Liberal Party and was elected president of the Political Union by brokering a creative deal with the leader of the Conservative Party, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who today is a federal judge on the short list for the Supreme Court. Mr. Wilkinson's party supported Mr. Kerry for president, and the following year, Mr. Wilkinson became president with support from the Liberal Party.
As head of the union, Mr. Kerry regularly dined with visiting speakers and built up a reputation on campus. "The first time I saw John Kerry I was somewhat awed by his stage presence," " said John Townsend, two years younger, who would later become president of the union himself. "He was so poised, although he could seem aloof, too. It was obviously very much on his mind that his initials were J.F.K."
In Mr. Kerry's last performance at Yale, as class speaker on graduation weekend, he raised some doubts about the Vietnam War, but with the sort of careful nuances for which he is now known. At this point, in 1966, the anti-war sentiment on campus was just beginning to build.
"Yale changed completely from '66 to '68," said Lanny Davis, who was chairman of The Yale Daily News in 1966 and would later work in the Clinton White House. "It was a combination of drugs, radicalization because of the Vietnam War and the rise of the counterculture. Yale became politically polarized.''
Students marched against the war, turned in their draft cards and staged a huge demonstration when Lady Bird Johnson spoke to the Political Union. They packed the auditorium for a debate between Mr. Coffin and William F. Buckley Jr. But Mr. Bush avoided the furor his last two years. He was skeptical of Northeastern liberalism but not yet an outspoken conservative.
"I considered him a moderate Republican," Mr. Davis said. "I didn't see much political interest in general, although he had obvious political facility with people. I literally knew no one who had anything bad to say about him. Everyone liked him.''
Michael Keeling, a member of Mr. Bush's fraternity, said Mr. Bush was not as apolitical as believed and would talk about Texas politics all the time. "I wasn't surprised he ran for office,'' he said. "He's always had such a wonderful way of sizing people up quickly and remembering what's important to them."
Just about no one, though, expected Mr. Bush to get to the White House ahead of Mr. Kerry. John O'Leary, who was a year behind Mr. Bush and would later become the ambassador to Chile in the Clinton adminstration, summed up the prevailing view on campus. "You couldn't have been at Yale then and not known who John Kerry was," Mr. O'Leary said. "Like Bill Clinton, who arrived a few years later, he was someone you saw and immediately thought could be president someday. That was not what you thought of George Bush.''
Sure enough, Mr. Kerry reached Washington first, but the Northeastern sophistication that played so well at Yale did not lead quickly to the presidency. The electoral map was shifting south, and the fraternity president from the red state reached the White House first.
My husband and I, rough contemporaries of Bush and Kerry, college-aged during those War and demonstration years, conservative always, have struggled ever since with the gulf that exists between us and many of our contemporaries.
It seems to be profound and unbridgable.
It is one reason why, other differences put aside, the President will always have our support.
We're on the same side of that gulf.
Yalies need to get out more. America is much bigger than their little campus.
As a contemporary of yours--and especially living in the northeast--I have the same problem with many of my friends. I must admit though, my closest friends are conservatives.
But that is why FR is so great--it lets all of us know that there are legions of like-minded individuals across the country. We must all stay strong in the face of socialist/liberal/democrat idiocy.
Anyway, thanks for the ping -- interesting article. :)
I travel a fair amount and the weightless electrons in my 'puter holding the (occasional) unbiased articles and features provide some good reads. Also, just as one other FR poster who reports on the Today show with perky Katy, SOMEONE has to watch these guys... ;-)
You inadvertently left out the adjective "rich" between "chasing" and "women."
Anyway, do you remember a long time ago (maybe 15+ years ago) when some guy used to run tiny ads on the very bottom of the front page of the Slimes, bitching about his apt. building being "held hostage" by one cable TV company, which was preventing competitors from coming into the building?
She attended a small fundraiser for a reading program with her husband in Dallas. When they arrived at the house Barbra Bush answered the door and invited them inside. There were only about thirty people there and one of them happened to be GWB.
As they were all chatting some one told of how they were at a governors meeting with Jeb. There were governors from all the states and Jeb yelled over to Jesse Ventura, " Hey Jesse, I got a brother in Texas who can kick your ass!". The group at the party laughed and W stood up and began to do his best Arnold pose down.
Sounds like a pretty cool regular guy to me.
Well something has changed then. Kerry makes AlGore look like a polished, relaxed, dynamic orator.
I was born in 1970, so I cannot say I know this for a fact, but I have been informed by plenty of folks alive and involved at the time that the wave of campus protest ended rather suddenly (something to do with Nixon curtailing the draft? If so, this puts a whole 'nother spin on late '60's campus "activism"). I am also informed that most "protesters" saw the unrest as nothing more than a chance to get out of classes (especially tests) and to pick up naive swooning little co-eds.
Anyone have any first-hand input on this period?
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