Yale, Harvard and the Oval Office

As standard-bearer of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama has ended the white-male monopoly on presidential nominations while extending recent domination by an even smaller, more elite minority — holders of Yale and Harvard degrees. Among the 12 nominees of the two major parties in the past 20 years, Obama (Harvard Law, '91) becomes the 10th to have graduated from one of the nation's two oldest, most prestigious major universities. All winners since 1988 have held a degree from Yale (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush) while their opponents featured a mix of more Yalies (Bush Sr., John Kerry) and Harvard Johnnies (Michael Dukakis, Al Gore). In that 20-year span, the only major party nominees without a credential from Yale, Harvard or both (as with George W.), have been war heroes Bob Dole (Washburn Municipal University in Kansas) and John McCain (U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.). This year, even the principal runners-up in each party bore the requisite credentials: Mitt Romney holds degrees from Harvard's law and business schools, while Hillary Clinton graduated from Yale Law (where she was my classmate).

What's the explanation for this extraordinary situation — with Yale/Harvard degree-holders making up less than two-tenths of 1% of the national population, but winning more than 83% of recent presidential nominations?

It's not a reflection of longstanding tradition. Trend lines show increasing, not fading, dominance by the two schools. Compared with the 10 Yale-Harvard nominees since '88, the quarter-century before that yielded only one (Gerald Ford, Yale Law) out of 12.

In fact, many of our greatest presidents attended obscure institutions of higher learning (such as Ronald Reagan's Eureka College in Illinois) or no college at all. Several esteemed chief executives (George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman) never earned a university degree.

Nor can conspiracy theorists plausibly suggest that "old school ties" and establishment connections explain the recent rise of Yale/Harvard grads. In the early days of the Republic, before Yale and Harvard faced scores of academic competitors, and when mercantile and planter elites ruled every aspect of American life, you might expect a self-contained, exclusive group to dominate presidential politics. But before the Civil War, among the first 16 presidents, only two attended Harvard (the Adams boys, John and John Quincy) and none attended Yale. Moreover, in today's academic world there's no clear-cut superiority or special course of study giving Yale and Harvard grads better preparation for politics. Stanford, for instance, offers its students a superb education and, as incubator of the high-tech industry, leaves alumni well-wired into today's power elite. But the last presidential nominee with a Stanford degree was Herbert Hoover.

Yale-Harvard credentials play a more prominent role in jockeying for the nation's top job while college in general has become more important for those seeking a job. A university education doesn't necessarily make an applicant more qualified, but it tells you something about his or her ambition and self-discipline. As recently as 40 years ago, only 11% of adults earned baccalaureate degrees (or higher), so talented young people found many alternate paths to success. Today, half the adult population has a post-high school education of some kind.

With a university education more accessible, it's also more expected. Grads earn bigger incomes than their non-degreed counterparts not just because education prepares them better for their work, but also because the diplomas they've won serve as indicators of drive and determination.

In that context, the competition has greatly intensified for coveted spots in the nation's two most revered universities. Today, pushy parents struggle to place their toddlers in fashionable preschools in order to gain some advantage in the furious fight for future admission to Harvard or Yale.

In the past, alumni children and graduates of posh prep schools could nurse their "Gentleman's C's" and still expect a golden ticket to Cambridge or New Haven, but those days have ended. Yale and Harvard (and the other Ivies) launched special efforts in the '60s to attract applicants from every ethnic group and economic background, facilitated by the provision of generous financial aid. With applicants drawn from an ever-widening segment of the populace (including the likes of Dukakis, Clinton and Obama), and increased focus by the country's most ambitious kids on just two schools at the competitive pinnacle of the academic heap, Yale/Harvard graduates increasingly came to represent America's best — not just the best-connected.

Today, the most prestigious degrees don't so much guarantee success in adulthood as they confirm success in childhood and adolescence. That piece of parchment from New Haven or Cambridge doesn't guarantee you've received a spectacular education, but it does indicate that you've competed with single-minded effectiveness in the first 20 years of life.

And the winners of that daunting battle — the driven, ferociously focused kids willing to expend the energy and make the sacrifices to conquer our most exclusive universities — are among those most likely to enjoy similar success in the even more fiercely fought free-for-all of presidential politics.

Obama may be a mold-breaker when it comes to his racial background, but in terms of his tightly wound, goal-oriented personality type and his Crimson-or-Blue-Chip education, he fits perfectly into the recently established pattern.

“Then it seems as if Yale and Harvard are quite incapable of producing candidates with originality, honesty, or the ability to hold productive positions without the aid of wealthy parents. Figures.” ~ Da Coyote

Not so fast.

Bobby Jindal is from Indian ancestry and a Roman Catholic and has a Biology degree and was accepted into med school at Harvard and Yale.

* He was elected Governor of Louisiana on October 20, 2007, with 54 percent of the vote in the primary, winning 60 of 64 parishes displacing incumbent Democrat Governor Kathleen Blanco.

* Jindal was born in Baton Rouge on June 10, 1971. He graduated from Baton Rouge High School in 1988 and went on to attend Brown University where he graduated with honors in biology and public policy. Following his graduation from Brown he attended Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar, having turned down admissions to medical and law schools at both Harvard and Yale.

* In 1994, Jindal went to work for McKinsey and Company as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies before entering public service. In 1996, he was appointed Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH). There were many issues that needed resolving during his tenure, not the least of which was the growing deficit in Louisiana’s Medicaid program. During Jindal’s tenure as DHH Secretary, he rescued Louisiana’s Medicaid program from bankruptcy, childhood immunizations increased, Louisiana ranked third best nationally in health care screenings for children, and new and expanded services for elderly and disabled persons were offered.

* In 1998, Jindal was appointed Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. As Executive Director, he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Commission, whose work continue to be the driving force behind much of the ongoing debate on how to strengthen and improve Medicare.

* At the conclusion of the Commission’s work, Jindal was appointed President of the University of Louisiana System, the 16th largest higher education system in the country. While serving as President, Jindal worked to establish areas of excellence at each individual institution.

* President George W. Bush appointed Jindal to serve as Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2001. In that position, he served as the principal policy advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He later resigned from the position in 2003 to return to Louisiana and run for elected office for the first time. In that race, Jindal went from being a relatively unknown candidate for Governor, to receiving the most votes in the primary election and eventually 48 percent of the vote in runoff.

* In 2004 he was elected to the 109th United States Congress representing the First District of Louisiana. In Congress he was elected Freshman Class President and served on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the House Committee on Homeland Security, and the House Committee on Resources. Bobby also served as Assistant Majority Whip. In his first term he passed a number of notable pieces of legislation and played an instrumental role in Louisiana’s recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. His noteworthy accomplishments include the passage of legislation to bring significant offshore energy revenues to Louisiana for the first time and legislation that keeps Federal Emergency Management Agency from taxing certain recovery grants as income.

* Jindal was re-elected to Congress in 2006 with 88 percent of the vote majority.

* Jindal also recently met with McCain and is being considered as one of his running mates.

http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&navID=38&cpID=1&cfmID=0&catID=0

BONUS: Rush interviews Bobby Jindal for the Limbaugh Letter:
http://download.premiereradio.net/guest/rushlimb/pdf/LimbaughLetter_BobbyJindal_Interview.pdf

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