Back to the Future: 1912 Presidential Ivy Pedigrees Mirror Current Race

No one bats an eyelash any more at talk of the presidential candidates' elite college connections. But 88 years ago--the first time candidates from Princeton, Harvard and Yale topped the ballot--Ivy degrees were hardly required for presidential pedigrees.

In the election of 1912, Princeton man Woodrow F. Wilson topped the ballot, running as a Democrat and nabbing 6,293, 454 votes.

Progressive Party Harvardian Theodore Roosevelt, Class of 1880, came in second, with 4,119,538 votes.

And Yalie William Howard Taft, a Republican, came in third, with 3,484,980 votes.

Since then, a pit stop at the Ivy League on the way to the political top has become far more commonplace. This year, the presidential ticket is chock-full of Harvard and Yale men--and one woman--but since the loss of former Sen. Bill Bradley in the Democratic primaries, the main parties are missing a Princeton connection.

Both presidential candidates have Harvard degrees--Vice President Al Gore '69 from the College and Texas Gov. George W. Bush from Harvard Business School. Whoever ends up in the Oval Office will be able to pick up the phone and call Mass. Hall to talk with the winner of a different kind of presidential search.

Both major tickets also sport Yale credentials: Bush attended Yale as an undergraduate, as did Gore's running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who chaired The Yale Daily News as an undergraduate.

The Green Party, with Ralph Nader heading the ticket and Winona LaDuke '80-'82 in the second spot, also features Ivy pedigrees. Nader graduated from Princeton in 1955, and then headed to Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1958. LaDuke, a former Adams House resident, is the youngest Ivy grad in the race.

Columbia University presidential scholar Alan Brinkley says the all-Ivy race of 1912 suggests "the power of elite connections in helping people advance in public life."

The need for Ivy League networking, however, seems to have taken a back seat to parental pull.

"On the other hand, Bush and Gore, at least, have profited much more from their lineage than from their colleges," he wrote in an e-mail message.

According to Brinkley, would-be presidents climb the political ladder through one of two models. The first: an elite background. Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson are all examples of this, as are Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Class of 1904, John F. Kennedy '40 and Bush.

Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman, on the other hand, are examples of the second model--"ambition to rise above modest origins," Brinkley says.

Others who fit this mold include Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and, of course, President Clinton.

Not all candidates fall into these two categories, Brinkley adds, and some politicians of the second type also manage to get connected early on (like Clinton at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale).

"But it's important to remember that at least as many presidents--including postwar presidents--come from very modest circumstances (and non-elite educations) as come from the kinds of backgrounds represented in this year's race," Brinkley says.