Baseball Crank: POLITICS: The Party Of Two Universities

April 28, 2008

POLITICS: The Party Of Two Universities

Far be it from me to knock fancy Ivy League law degrees, but you know, with Obama and Hillary the last two choices standing, it appears that the Democrats will pick a candidate from Harvard or Yale for the sixth straight election - Fritz Mondale was the last time they took a candidate educated entirely outside those two universities. Perhaps, if they are concerned about the constant battle to establish that their candidates are normal people rather than captives of a lot of ideas, beliefs, and associations that don't really exist outside the left-wing academic hothouse, it may be time to fish in wider waters. Consider:

1988 - Dukakis (Harvard Law)
1992 - Clinton (Yale Law) & Gore (Harvard College)
1996 - Clinton (Yale Law) & Gore (Harvard College)
2000 - Gore (Harvard College) & Lieberman (Yale College & Yale Law)
2004 - Kerry (Yale College)
2008 - Obama (Harvard Law) or Hillary (Yale Law) (and both are married to graduates of the same law school)

Posted by Baseball Crank at 6:11 PM | Politics 2008 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

George W. Bush - Yale, Harvard
George HW Bush - Yale

In other words, more of the same from both parties.

Posted by: cephyn at April 28, 2008 6:40 PM

Crank,

Mondale did receive an Honorarium Degree from Harvard in 1976. :-)

Cephyn,

2008 John McCain - USNA
1996 Bob Dole - Kansas/Washburn Univ. Law
1980/84 Ronald Reagan - Eureka College
1976 Gerald Ford - TSUN
1960/68/72 Richard Nixon Whittier College/Duke Law (he was accepted to Harvard but declined)
1964 Barry Goldwater - Attended Arizona for a year
1952/56 Dwight Eisenhower - USMA
1948 Thomas Dewey - TSUN/Columbia Law
1940 Wendell Willkie - Indiana/Indiana Law
1936 Ald Landon - Kansas
1928/32 Herbert Hoover - Stanford
1924 Calvin Coolidge - Amherst
1920 Warren Harding - Ohio Central
1916 Charles Hughes - Madison & Brown/Columbia Law
1908/12 William H. Taft - Yale/Cincinnati Law
1904 Theodore Roosevelt - Harvard
I don't feel like listing the rest but from Lincoln to McKinley I don't think they nominated any from Harvard or Yale. Just guys from Kenyon College and Western Reserve Eclectic Institute.

Posted by: largebill at April 28, 2008 8:49 PM

Gerald Ford went to Michigan and then Yale Law School.

Posted by: Tom at April 29, 2008 12:41 PM

The fact that Bill Clinton was elected for two terms flies in the face of the argument that the those ideas don't exist outside of left-wing "hothouses". I suppose one could argue that the voters for Clinton disregarded his policies and simply voted for "change", but I don't find that convincing for -both- Clinton elections. Besides, Gore nearly won the race with Bush.

Too much is being made of this "not a candidate of the people"/"don't share their economic plight" angle with the Democrats. It doesn't hold much water. It appears to be more of a Republican hope than a reality.

And keep in mind - John F. Kennedy was extremely wealthy and went to Harvard.

Posted by: MVH at April 29, 2008 12:54 PM

I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with picking candidates from Harvard or Yale. I do think it may be unwise to pick only candidates from Harvard or Yale.

Posted by: The Crank at April 29, 2008 12:58 PM

I just don't think the universities or the fact that they are perceived by some as too liberal have much to do with it.

To the extent the Democrats have trouble extending from their base, it seems to be more an issue of geography than wealth or university attendance.

As I look at your list of recent Democratic candidates, Democrats have been more successful when they are not from the -northeast-. Clinton won, whereas Kerry and Dukakis lost. Of course, Gore would be the exception to this rule, but he had other problems, such as the lack of any personality whatsoever.

Posted by: MVH at April 29, 2008 1:22 PM