HARRY JAMES WILSON is going to be a politician. That's his destiny and his personality.
For now, though, Wilson is heading to Goldman Sachs to be an investment banker, spurning a job in Washington and a Rotary fellowship in India to move to Wall Street.
While many perceive investment bankers as materialistic and venal, Wilson says his future profession gets a bad rap.
He talks about investment banking in terms of the capital it lines up to expand business and the jobs creates: "I [now] see the job of a investment banker as raising capital for a firm. A year ago, if you had asked me, I would have said, 'Oh investment banking is paper money, I never would be interested in doing that.'"
Wilson agonized a long time over the decision to become an investment banker, consulting with Kalkanis throughout about his concerns. "Nothing he does is a flip decision. Harry is not someone who wants to spend his life on Wall Street. He has noble and lofty goals. He sees Wall Street as a stepping stone," Kalkanis says.
Wilson's father didn't blink when his son changed his goal from aeronautical engineering to law and politics during his senior year in high school. And his father similarly avoided pressuring his son, when Wilson was deciding between the Rotary fellowship and Goldman Sachs.
"He always was sharp in math," his father says. "He never needed a calculator. He could do it in his head faster. I was hoping he would lean to business. But I didn't interfere."
Wilson's long term goal remains political. But he believes the ideal politician is a citizen politician.
Career office holders, he says, grow stale. Wilson wants to bring outside expertise, an understanding of the rest of the world, to the political arena. Whether he'll get that world view on Wall Street, though, remains to be scene.
ALL THE BEST POLITICIANS talk about public service and patriotism. But often, particularly with campus politicians, it is difficult to tell if they mean it.
When Wilson talks about fighting for equality of opportunity for American working class families of all races, though, he genuinely seems to mean it.
Harry James Wilson wants you to believe him. He wants you to understand him.
"My senior year [of high school] I realized whatever opportunities I had open to me I didn't have open to me so I could...gain material wealth," Wilson says. "I had it open to me so I could do the same for others who didn't have the same opportunities as I did."
Students (and reporters) have a tough time trusting campus politicians, but it has to be almost as difficult not to like Wilson. It is hard not to take what he says for the truth. He honestly wants to be a politician because he likes people, cares about them and wants to help them have the opportunity to succeed.
Cynics beware. As frightening as it may seem, Harry James Wilson is for real, and maybe the nicest Republican you'll ever meet.
'What makes Harry so caring towards others is that he has a strong sense of who he is and where he comes from.' Steve Kalkanis '93