Poison Ivy (League)
Ivy certainly looks nice, but you wouldn’t want to stroll through it. Here in Southern California, it’s common knowledge that most of our rodents hang out in the stuff. If bubonic plague ever breaks out in L.A., the source will be found lurking in the shrubbery.
What has me dwelling on ivy is my recent realization that much of what I don’t like about American politics — namely, American politicians — can be traced back to Ivy League schools. It can’t just be a coincidence that four or five universities keep spitting out presidential candidates and their spouses with the sort of regularity that Notre Dame used to turn out All American football players.
What’s more, it’s not a sudden development and it’s not limited to just one party. William Howard Taft, for crying out loud, went to Yale. Theodore Roosevelt went to Harvard, and so did his fifth cousin, Franklin Roosevelt. Woodrow Wilson graduated from Princeton.
George Herbert Walker Bush went to Yale. His son, not willing to leave bad enough alone, went to both Yale and Harvard. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, all went to Yale. Al Gore and Michael Dukakis went to Harvard. Ted Kennedy went to Harvard. Twice. The first time, they booted him out for cheating on a Spanish exam.
Barack Obama went to Columbia and his wife, Michelle, went to Princeton. With such a terrible football team it’s really no wonder she was never proud to be an American.
Considering the politicians the schools have let loose on us, perhaps they should rename it the Poison Ivy League.
It’s enough to make me wonder if the reason I liked Harry Truman was because he’s the only president since 1896 who didn’t have a college degree. Ronald Reagan had one, but it was from Eureka College, which probably didn’t even have ivy on its walls.
It is worth noting that, although Harvard has been around since 1636, Yale since 1701 and Princeton since 1746, none of them can claim Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln, as an alumnus. George Washington was home-schooled. Thomas Jefferson attended William and Mary and graduated in two years. Abraham Lincoln was also home-schooled, but he was both teacher and student, a true autodidact who read the Bible, Shakespeare and his law books, by candlelight.
Dwight Eisenhower attended West Point and John McCain graduated from the Naval Academy. So it’s no surprise that Ike was able to lead the fight against Nazi barbarians and that McCain was able to stand up to Viet Cong sadism for five long years. Which, come to think of it, is longer than Barack Obama has spent garnering leadership experience listening to the likes of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd spewing forth on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
The only thing that prevents me from giving whole-hearted endorsement to a military education is that one of our former presidents also graduated from the Naval Academy: Jimmy Carter.
Television writer Burt Prelutsky is the author of Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (101 Reasons Why I’m Happy I Left the Left).
Burt , there is not enough Calimine lotion on the Planet to cure the rashes permeated by the politicians from “Poison Ivy League” Universities.
Let’s not forget that most of the folks at Enron were Ivy Leaguers as well.
To err is human, to really screw things up you need a Harvard economist.
If you are female, smile a lot, and let them talk, young Ivy Leaguers will give you an earful. They are taught that they are the best this country has to offer, and that they are entitled to run it. This is all very clear from their conversation. And, there are older people in position to hire them, who will not look at a resume from any but a short list of schools. This is no secret: many parents of children who attend Ivy League schools will say that is the whole reason for sending their kid to one of those schools is to secure those hiring preferences. Remember Harriet Meyers? There were people who argued that this woman who handled big-ticket litigation was unqualified for a position on the US Supreme Court because of the identity of the law school she attended.
It has been well more than 100 years since the time that there were only 10 colleges in this country.
It seems a little harsh to blame everything that’s wrong with modern politics on the Ivy league. After all, correlation does not imply causation- the fact that the people who lead our country are the ones leading the country is probably a result of various personality traits (ambition, talent, etc) that are also responsible for a) them attending Ivy league schools and b) whatever you say is wrong with American politics. There is some very troubling stuff that goes on at Ivy League schools, but I would argue that we’re only aware of that because they receive the most publicity and that in many ways equally bad or even worse things are happening at almost every university in the country. Sure, many of the top politicians in this country (including some very unpleasant ones) have an Ivy league degree in common, but a radical feminist could just as easily claim that the thing that makes them nasty is the Y chromosome that even more of them have in common.
There are two entitled classes in the U.S. — people granted their position via public policy (i.e. affirmative action, welfare and other handouts) and The Ivy Leaguers. Out of the many hundreds of employees I have had at several companies, there were very few Harvard alums who actually worked hard and were bright. The rest felt that because they had gone to Harvard (or other Ivy League school here), they were entitled to sit back and let others do the hard work. I was not impressed.
Where did they go wrong with Jimmy? Oh, well, you can’t expect all of them to be victories.
First, to get into most Ivy Leage Universities in the first place you need either a straight-A averae, or a position in the very Upper Class. Secondly, many of not most Ivy Leagers do feel entitled to their position by virtue of their family’s position in society, third, many of the undergraduate courses are fluff courses many with a Pass-Fail grade, or none at all, and finally they serve as finishing schools for elites, rather than intellectual powerhouses that they purport to be..A good public University will more likely turn out a better Phi Beta Kappa than an Ivy League school, but those schools do not make the A-List when it comes to hiring…More and more books are being written by students to refllect these views–read “Privilege” for example, about Harvard University
Worse than having Ivy League candidates is the utter takeover of nearly all of American politics by lawyers. Only John McCain, of the entire crop of munchkins who wanted to be president this year, was not a lawyer.
STOP ELECTING LAWYERS!!!
Ron Paul was never a lawyer…
And he certainly didn’t go to an Ivy League school. Gettysburg College, 1957.
I see that others have also noticed how the supposed elites put in piss-poor performance. From Valerie’s comment, it looks like arrogance and hubris is taught to the Ivy Leaguers (“They are taught that they are the best this country has to offer, and that they are entitled to run it.”). I think we’re seeing a real life example of why the Constitution included a clause that says no titles of nobility may be granted. Those who are taught that they are “entitled” to run the country and believe that b.s. turn into pompous pricks who believe their turds don’t stink and that they can do no wrong (and frequently look at you as if to say, “Who the hell gave YOU a right to breathe MY air!”). They forget they are still human and still make mistakes. But the pompous pricks who believe they can do no wrong refuse to admit ever making a mistake, and taking the necessary actions to correct it when they inevitably do make one. Nobody, not even the smartest person in the world, can possibly take everything into account. Something they didn’t count on is going to blow up their model sooner or later, and they’ll have made a mistake that needs correcting. If they don’t have the humility to do so, and keep on doing the wrong things, those little mistakes have a tendency to grow into huge, disastrous, damaging errors. Note the Keynesian thinking about the economy as Exhibit A.
Do you know who I am!?
Even in a country built on the idea of equality among people, the elite of the Ivy League still likes to picture itself above all other Americans. It shouldn’t be too surprising that a majority of those seeking political office would come from this self-assured, privileged class.
All political candidates need to have a strong ego and sense of entitlement to get through the election process. And most candidates possess an “I know what’s best” attitude, or they wouldn’t be running for office. Those in the Ivy League possess this attitude in abundance.
Lucky for us our system of govt attempts to limit their despotic tendencies, and the damage caused by the incompetent and corrupt among them.
This article is quite crass and is precisely the type of “trash” at which many of those you despire would turn up their noses. The author scoffs at the world’s group of most elite schools for quite unfounded (and uninformed) reasons. The answer to the title of this article is really quite obvious: the Ivies are bastions of intelligence and resource and hence are more prone to producing alumni that assume prominent positions in society. Perhaps the author should first consider reasons why the rest of non-Ivy society has NOT produced presidents and why he believes that the mere attendance at one of the aforementioned schools “poisons” the political sphere. In short, the author reveals his fundamental insecurities with his own social class rather than actually considering possible explanations for why things are the way they are.