Word: harvardization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When I started working on an article about Harvard kids with presidential ambitions, I knew that getting interviews would be tricky. I wanted to talk to Harvard’s savviest young politicos—men and women with enough chutzpah to dream about the Oval Office and enough talent that they actually might succeed. But the students who were most serious about the presidency would, I assumed, be the quickest to deny their ambition. If I called them up and asked, "So, I've heard you want to be president," they would say, “No, that?...
...never met him, but I pitched the story about wannabe presidents with Caleb already in mind. Twice, in passing, I had heard him referred to as “that guy who wants to be president.” He was a former head of the Harvard Republican Club, and I found out he was taking a semester off to work for Karl Rove in D.C. I assumed he wouldn’t admit to any presidential ambitions, but that was part of the draw. Some students who were serious about the presidency would be too savvy to admit...
...phone, Caleb was polite but wary. I told him that I was writing about the dynamics of political ambition on campus, and about the arc of political ambition from freshman year to the final years of college. (I would also be interviewing the inevitable Harvard freshmen who publicized their presidential goals.) I said he was a well-known figure in campus politics and that I wanted to fly down to D.C. and profile him in-depth. He asked about the other people I would be interviewing. Finally, he agreed to the interview...
...this point, the real angle of my article was clear, and Caleb was frustrated. He told me, calmly, that I had not been honest with him when I set up the interview. Why had I told him the article was about Harvard, not the future, when I was actually focused on his supposed presidential goals...
...about Harvard, I said. It’s about how presidential ambition is perceived on campus. I don’t care whether you say you want to be president or not, but I do care how you explain why your classmates think...