Elite President-Elect Fills Cabinet with Ivy Grads and Assorted Winners
By now we know Obama appointed Timothy Geithner (Dartmouth '83) Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers (MIT '75 and Harvard '82) head of the National Economic Council. In fact, David Brooks wrote a column in last Friday's New York Times about how "even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes." What other schools are representing in the Obama inner sanctum of rockstar elite East Coast terrorists?
- Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton (Wellesley '69, Yale Law '73)
- Commerce Secretary: Bill Richardson (Tufts '70, Tufts '71)
- Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle (South Dakota State '69)
Under Consideration:
National Security Adviser:
- James Jones (Georgetown School of Foreign Service '66, National War College '85)
- James Steinberg (Harvard '73, Yale Law '78)
More elites after the jump.
Secretary of Defense:
- Robert Gates (William and Mary '65, Indiana University '66, Georgetown '74, Willaim and Mary '98)
- Chuck Hagel (University of Nebraska at Omaha)
- Richard Danzig (Reed College, Yale Law, Oxford University)
Attorney General:
- Eric Holder: (Columbia '73, Columbia Law '76)
I'm beginning to think Yale Law is a world leader training program.
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November 25th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Isn’t it ironic that everyone keeps giving obama accolades as a genius for transferring to columbia and graduating from harvard law, when he refuses to release his college transcripts or board scores? I seem to remember 8 years of bush catching it for his scores being in the bottom quarter of Yale admits…
November 25th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
It’s hard to go to HLS, lead the Review, and then get a position teaching law at Chicago with bad grades, don’cha think?
November 25th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Wait– I guess you’re right. The fact that he refuses to tout his grades or board scores proves that he did not in fact go to an Ivy League school.
November 25th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
ironic? I don’t think that word means what you think it does.
I have to agree with D’07, his resume is already ample proof of his intelligence and reasoning without scores or class rank.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Rahm Emanuel graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. In your face, Ivy League!
November 26th, 2008 at 2:51 am
bush’s resume is arguably as impressive as Obama’s, yet no one was fawning over his supposed intellect when he was elected 8 years ago (don’t mention the fact that he is a legacy, because a study of college admissions at top schools by Princeton’s former president Bowen has shown that minority status is a bigger boost to admissions than being a legacy).
November 26th, 2008 at 5:16 am
This post was better when it was David Brooks’ column last week.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
(don’t mention the fact that he is a legacy, because a study of college admissions at top schools by Princeton’s former president Bowen has shown that minority status is a bigger boost to admissions than being a legacy)
Methinks Yale was a different place when Bush was there. Something tells me that minority status would not have been so beneficial as it is today. In any case, Bush’s legacy is hardly impressive. His CIA dad got him into Yale, after which he went to HBS — and we all know that MBAs are a crock. (This is proved by the fact that every business he laid his hands upon, including the U.S. economic system, failed.) I’m sorry to say it, but anybody can graduate from an Ivy League school with so-so grades.
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:20 am
obama graduated magna from hls. that’s top 5-10% gpa-wise. good enough for ya? sheesh, look up some details before going off into right-wing conspiracy land.
December 7th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
uh,
maybe you should check your own facts before criticizing someone else.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DC1631F935A35751C0A966958260
This article says, “Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.” Also, “Until the 1970’s the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. That system came under attack in the 1970’s and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review. ”
Because Harvard does not rank students or give grades and because joining the law review is not based on grades (for the explicit reason of helping minority students join), saying that he was on the law review or president of it does not necessarily mean he did well academically.
Also, D’07, minority students were heavily recruited on college campuses since the 1970’s. Universities, especially top ones, tried very hard to recruit black and hispanic students. How many asians with 1100s get into top schools?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3475092/