“Yalies like to contend that they’re committed to public service and all the rest of you are money grubbing fools,” he says.

He attributes the real success of Bush and other recent Yale grads-cum candidates to a monkey-see, monkey-do phenomenon.

“If you see someone else from your school makes it, it all becomes within your grasp,” Nelson says. Still, he says he is surprised at the strength of Yale’s showing this election cycle, calling it “a vast overrepresentation of one school.”

The Crimson Perspective

While Yale seems poised to win the great game of presidential politics this time, Harvard’s campus political gurus have urged the faithful to remain confident in Harvard’s political prowess.

Glickman cites the strong presence of Harvard alums on campaign staffs as a way for Harvard to exert power on the White House, if only indirectly.

“Harvard people are driving the trains of the campaign. Yale people are merely puppets,” he jokes.Adam Kovacevich ’99, deputy press secretary for Lieberman, is one such puppeteer.

“Even though he’s a Yalie, we feel really strongly about his campaign. My support for Joe Lieberman transcends Ivy League rivalries,” he says.

“Just as a stopped clock is correct twice a day, every so often Yale puts out a decent graduate like Howard Dean,” says Garrett M. Graff ’03, a press secretary for Dean and a former Crimson news executive.

Kerry’s press secretary, Keeley Benander, took a more conciliatory approach to the Harvard-Yale rivalry, citing other university rivalries quelled by the student bodies’ belief in Kerry.

“Students from Iowa State University and University of Iowa put aside their rivalry to support Kerry,” she says.

Benander is apparently oblivious to the rancorous rivalry which has divided Harvard and Yale for more than three centuries.

Iowa did not became a state until 1846.

Governing Greenbacks

Nonetheless, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s campaign was non-plussed by the Harvard-Yale rivalry or the absence of Harvard candidates from the Democratic nomination.