At the height of last summer's presidential campaign, then-Vice President George Bush charged that his opponent, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis--a Law School graduate and former Kennedy School lecturer--had spent too much time in the "liberal boutique" that is Harvard.

But despite his Harvard-bashing campaign rhetoric, Bush relied heavily on his own cadre of ivory tower advisors, even citing by name Baker Professor of Economics Martin S. Feldstein '61 during his first televised debate with Dukakis.

And after the campaign, Bush selected more than his fair share of aides from the "boutique."

Steven R. Singer, director of press relations for the Kennedy School, says he sees some irony in the selections.

"Despite Bush's campaign rhetoric to the contrary, the Bush Administration made a sincere effort to find the best people," says Singer. "We're pleased they found them at the Kennedy School."

The first find was Attorney General Richard L. Thornburgh, who replaced the controversial Edwin Meese III in August and was retained by Bush shortly after he was elected president. The director of the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics (IOP) for a little over a year, Thornburgh was even touted as a possible vice-presidential candidate before former President Ronald W. Reagan tapped him for the Justice post.

Thornburgh's assistant, IOP Deputy Director David R. Runkel, became acting director of the Kennedy School's "bridge to the outside world," but he, too, was soon called to Washington--as a spokesperson for the attorney general's office.

After the election, the two Republicans were joined by a new influx of Harvard scholars--this despite the widely circulated joke that when the bus came to Harvard Square last January to transport academics to the capital the scholars would find only a jeep.

IBM Professor of Business and Government Roger B. Porter was one of those Harvard affiliates who took the jeep from its Cambridge depot. An expert in presidential politics, Porter has has taken a two-year leave of absence from the Kennedy School to serve as Bush's chief advisor for domestic policy. And Richard G. Darman '64, a former lecturer in public policy, currently heads the Office of Management and Budget.

Presaging their rise to power in the Bush Administration, the two professors had planned a Kennedy School class in the early '70s which would have been called "The Management of Federal Policy Making."

The list of Cambridge-Washington connections does not end with Darman and Porter, however.

Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy Robert D. Blackwill is also working in the capital, as a special assistant to the president for national security affairs and as the National Security Council's senior director for European and Soviet affairs.

The response to this influx of Harvard Republicans in Washington has been predictably modest, given the campaign rhetoric.

"It's true that there are a substantial number of Harvard people [in the administration]," acknowledges Undersecretary of the Treasury for Finance Robert R. Glauber, himself a Harvard Business School professor.

But he continues, "The K-School has had more of track [to Washington]. We've had a few people, but it has not been a well-worn track" from the Business School to the government.