Word: rooseveltism
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Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, future president of the United States, described it years later as the greatest disappointment of his life. Someone--he never learned who--had black-balled him, vetoing his membership in the Porcellian Club, at the turn of the century the top rung in Harvard's rigid social ladder. Heartbroken, the young Franklin had to settle for the Fly Club and the Crimson presidency instead...
...Harvard students today may not spend as much time debating the relative social merits of the A.D. and the Fly as they did in 1903. But if you substitute student groups--which to a large extent have replaced final clubs as the cornerstone of students' identity--for the clubs, Roosevelt would feel at home. Harvard students still love a good hierarchy. And, sadly, the institutionalized pecking order of many Harvard student groups is oftentimes just as silly as the turn-of-the-century final club scene seems...
...difference is ostensibly that the hierarchies in today's student groups, publications, government simulations, and such, unlike the elitist final club scene of Roosevelt's time, are based on merit. But anyone who has ever applied for a position and seen it go to a friend or roommate of the student making the decision knows this isn't true...
...always been defined by risk; it may be our predominant national characteristic. It's a country founded by risk takers fed up with the English Crown and expanded by pioneers--a word that seems utterly American. Our heritage throws up heroes--Lewis and Clark, Thomas Edison, Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart--who bucked the odds, taking perilous chances...
...presidential excellence. Some men of great accomplishment, like General Douglas MacArthur, would have made terrible Presidents. Others who showed little promise before winning the White House--Abraham Lincoln was a mere one-term Congressman and failed Senate candidate--blossomed into greatness once they got there. One exception is Teddy Roosevelt, who took San Juan Hill before taking the White House. T.R., not surprisingly, is one of McCain's heroes...