Years later, MacNeil says he had a conversation with a Harvard dean about his criticism of the College's history program.

"He told me in [the Harvard] graduate school they were teaching high school history teachers," MacNeil says.

In the Class of 1949's 25th anniversary report, MacNeil characterized himself as a skeptic rather than a cynic. He recently says that this philosophy affects his perception of Harvard.

"I'm a skeptic about Harvard, I guess. I love the place, of course, but I can find a lot wrong with it," MacNeil says.

MacNeil is also skeptical about the performance of President Clinton and Congress during the impeachment debate.

"I feel both bodies of the legislature have gone downhill in the last 20 years," MacNeil says.

"There is much more bitterness."

He also criticized Congress's performance during this year's impeachment debate, which he linked to a "pile-up of investigations going back to Watergate."

"I think the Congress has acted kind of shabbily in the whole business," MacNeil says. "The management of the impeachment of Clinton was really mind-boggling.

MacNeil says he finds analysis of the president difficult.

"I don't know how to write about this guy, [what a] strange fellow," MacNeil says. "I find Clinton an astonishingly brilliant human being with an appallingly bad taste-it's unbelievable."

Although MacNeil cut a large profile with his studies of national politics, he had a footnote in history before he even arrived in Cambridge.

But this achievement was far more accidental.

While attending Phillips Exeter Academy as a teenager, MacNeil was badly injured by a baseball. He fell into a coma for 10 days. When he emerged from the coma he wanted to go back to playing baseball. MacNeil's doctor told him that he would have to wear a helmet while batting.

But at that time batting helmets were not available commercially.