IvyGate Index: The Executive Branch
When George W. Rootin’-Tootin’ Bush was elected in 2000, Ivy Leaguers got a little nervous. Would this folksy Texan smoke all the elites out of the executive branch?
Then we breathed a big, brandy-perfumed sigh of relief. The U.S. government can’t function without elitism! First there’s the pecking order of offices: Bush beats Rumsfeld beats Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. Then there’s seniority: Rumsfeld and Cheney were helping run the country back when Bush was still doing lines off Andover china. Even though W.’s Yale and Harvard roots were kept on the hush-hush, we knew: Ivy League snobbery just might have a chance in this administration!
And so, almost six years into Bush’s tenure, we bring you the second installment of the IvyGate Index, measuring Ivy influence in our government’s executive branch. Our crackerjack statisticians have once again inhaled reams of data, using patented hegemony formulae to produce another set of cutting-edge visual representations. Duck down, clown: the pie charts are back.
Verdict: Mild dominance!
To be precise, the executive branch’s IvyGate Index Quotient (IGIQ) is 52.9 percent. Color us shocked, shocked — we had no idea our plainspoken president was such an elitist at heart! After the jump, we’ve included the raw data for your statmongering perusal.
EARLIER: The IvyGate Index: Calibrating Hegemony Since 2006 (the media)
Raw Data
| Office | Incumbent | Undergraduate | Graduate | Ivy? | ||||
| Presidency | George W. Bush | Yale | Harvard | Yes | ||||
| Vice Presidency | Dick Cheney | Wyoming (Yale dropout) | Wyoming | Yes | ||||
| State | Condoleezza Rice | Denver | Notre Dame | No | ||||
| Treasury | Henry M. Paulson | Dartmouth | Harvard | Yes | ||||
| Defense | Donald H. Rumsfeld | Princeton | Yes | |||||
| Justice | Alberto R. Gonzales | Rice | Harvard | Yes | ||||
| Interior | Dirk A. Kempthorne | Idaho | No | |||||
| Agriculture | Michael O. Johanns | Saint Mary’s (Minn.) | Creighton | No | ||||
| Commerce | Carlos M. Gutierrez | Monterrey Inst. of Tech. | No | |||||
| Labor | Elaine L. Chao | Mount Holyoke | Harvard | Yes | ||||
| Housing and Urban Development | Alphonso R. Jackson | Truman State | WashU | No | ||||
| Transportation | Maria Cino (acting) | St. John Fisher College | No | |||||
| Energy | Samuel W. Bodman | Cornell | MIT | Yes | ||||
| Health and Human Services | Michael O. Leavitt | Southern Utah | No | |||||
| Education | Margaret Spellings | Houston | No | |||||
| Veterans Affairs | Jim Nicholson | West Point | Columbia | Yes | ||||
| Homeland Security | Michael Chertoff | Harvard | Harvard | Yes | ||||
Source: The Internets
Note: The IvyGate Index may be adjusted to 55.8 percent if the Senate confirms as Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who attended but did not graduate from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
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September 11th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Shouldn’t the National Security Advisor be good for something as well?
September 11th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
never anyone from brown… :(
September 11th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I thought grad status only counted for .5?
September 11th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
I like these posts. Keep the IvyGate indices coming!
November 15th, 2006 at 1:38 am
Because of this disastrous new layout, A LOT OF YOUR POSTS ARE COVERED UP BY THE ANNOYING COLUMN ON THE RIGHT!