IvyGate Index: The Executive Branch

IvyGate Index: The Executive BranchWhen 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!

IvyGate Index: The Executive Branch 

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)

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Capitol Hill Interns Waste of Ink, Alcohol

Capitol Hill Interns Waste of Ink, AlcoholQuotes left out of Phil Rucker's (Yale '06) piece on D.C. intern culture in Monday's Washington Post:

  • "Oh, I'm so careless, I've left my security badge on for the entire Metro ride home."
  • "God, I was at the office so late -- Really big bill, you know, I think it has a good chance -- I guess I just won't change before the kegger in Henle 505. Guess I'll just wear this button-down shirt, untucked, sleeves rolled up. God, is my badge still on? So embarrassing!"
  • "Oh, you work for Tom Davis? Virginia ... 10th, right? Tommy? Tom-Tom? Tom's nuts! Anyway, committee staff or personal? That's cool, I work in Dirksen."

And they still get laid. The city of Southern efficiency, Northern hospitality and Ninth Circle interns never ceases to amaze us. Rucker's piece -- an evergreen at the Post, which runs one each August -- is lively enough reading, but it lacks that certain je ne sais puke we believe all features on coffeefetchers should have in spades. Judge them, Rucker! Judge them and their badges!

D.C. 50 Most Beautiful List Appears, Ivies Conspicuously Absent

It gets tiring to hear people talk about the declining beauty standards at your school as "[name of school] goggles." Because of course the first thing you do is to log onto Facebook and compare the Jason Browns and Samantha Millers from your school to the Jason Browns and Samantha Millers of the entire United States. And unless you go to Vanderbilt, with its affirmative action for Latvian models, chances are your school comes out looking pretty homely.

As if we needed any further confirmation, The Hill newspaper has just published the 50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill. How many of these 50 knockouts attended an Ivy? We'll give you a hint: it's the only outcome more pathetic than zero. That's right, one. Meet the only guy in D.C. with the looks to match the diploma:

Sexy ColumbianSam Arora, press aide, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) reelection campaign

Sam Arora, who bears an uncanny resemblance to actor Ben Stiller, was born in New York City and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

He graduated cum laude from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in political science. He had intended to major in theater but changed plans after studying politics for a year at Oxford University.

Arora's career in politics began on Capitol Hill as an intern and later as a staff assistant for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in 1999. While he was in college, he interned for Hillary2000 and worked in the New York senator's D.C. office in 2001 and 2002. He worked in the Democratic National Committee's political department in from 2003 to 2004 and has been back in Clinton's campaign office since 2005.

Just wait for Capitol Hill's 50 Best Personalities. Until then, Sam's all we got.