Presidential Race Draped In Yale Blue
BY GIL KLEIN MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE Mar 21, 2004
WASHINGTON - No matter who wins this presidential race, Yale will come out on top.
Not only did George W. Bush and John Kerry graduate from the Ivy League school in the classes of'68 and'66 respectively, but both were members of the ultra-elite secret society, Skull and Bones.
For Yale, this is nothing new.
A Yale graduate has occupied the White House for four consecutive terms - George H.W. Bush ('48), Bill Clinton (Law'73), and George W. Bush.
And a Yalie has been on a presidential ticket in every election since 1976 and YALE Gerald R. Ford (Law'41).
If Kerry had not won the Democratic nomination, Yale still could have sent an alumnus to the White House. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean ('71) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut ('64, Law'67) were graduates.
It's possible that both presidential tickets will be all-Yale. Vice President Dick Cheney attended Yale but did not graduate. Among leading contenders for the Democratic vice presidential nomination is Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida ('65).
Waiting in the wings for a presidential run is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York (Law'73), who met her husband at Yale.
"Yale is probably the number one school for someone who wants to get into government," said historian Douglas Brinkley, whose book on Kerry's service in Vietnam was published recently. "If you have political ambitions, particularly in foreign affairs and intelligence, Yale is where you go."
That's not to sneer at Harvard and Princeton, which Brinkley included with Yale as "the top finishing schools for public service."
An all-male institution until 1969, Yale was more likely to admit students who were the sons of public servants, while Harvard accepted the sons of prominent businessmen, said David Berg, a Yale professor of clinical psychiatry who was a friend and undergraduate classmate of Howard Dean.
"Yale told us it was selecting 1,000 male leaders (the size of the freshman class) and that it championed public service," he said. "We were told about our obligation to serve."
Yale produced leaders of the mid-20th century who directed foreign policy, planned the atomic bomb, served as ambassadors and Cabinet members, and manned the intelligence services.
"The tradition of achievement through public service at Yale is as prevalent and Old Blue as the smell of the dark-stained wood on the long tables that are all over campus," said Alexandra Robbins ('98), author of "Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power." "You can't escape it."
The turbulence of the'60s produced a generation of politically involved students. Yale changed its admissions policy to accept more students from public schools and fewer alumni sons and prep school graduates, she said.
That didn't stop the school from admitting George W. Bush, even though he was not in the top half of his class at Andover, she said. But as Nelson recalls, his class was full of high school student body presidents.
"I think we were influenced by John F. Kennedy," Nelson said. Kennedy was a Harvard man, but "he made politics a noble calling. I knew clearly that's what I wanted to do when I was there, and I think that was true of Kerry and Lieberman."
Nelson's political career was helped by friends he made at Yale. His roommate was George Smathers Jr., whose father was a senator from Florida at the time and a good buddy of Kennedy.
Lieberman was selected for a special program that allowed him to craft a course of study in politics that included work in the New Haven mayor's office and as a legislative assistant. Three years after he graduated from Yale's law school, he was elected to the Connecticut State Senate.
Students selected for Skull and Bones are supposed to be the most ambitious. Only 15 are picked from each senior class. No women were admitted until 1991. Student leaders, top athletes and the children of past Bonesmen get the tap.
They meet inside a windowless building known as The Tomb in a ritual so secret that neither Bush nor Kerry would disclose any details in interviews with Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press."
William Howard Taft, Yale's first White House occupant, had been a member of Skull and Bones. His grandfather had been a founding member in 1832. Prescott Bush, who became a senator from Connecticut, started the line that included both Bush presidents.
Bonesman Averell Harriman served as governor of New York and as an envoy for Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon R. Johnson. Harriman and his wife Pamela were major fund-raisers for Democratic candidates through Bill Clinton.
Henry Luce, who founded the Time-Life empire, was a Bonesman as were writers Archibald MacLeish and William F. Buckley, as well as Kennedy and Johnson's national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, Robbins said.
