The Mid-Century Aristocracy: Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy
As the twentieth century progressed, Ivy League schools cultivated a distinct patrician culture. Wealthy families sent their sons to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton not necessarily for grueling academic rigor, but to build social networks and cultivate an aristocratic style. Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy both emerged from this specific Harvard environment, using their elite polish to project confidence during times of national crisis.
Franklin D. Roosevelt attended Harvard at the turn of the century. He was less interested in dominating the classroom than he was in mastering campus politics. He became the editor of the Harvard Crimson, a powerful position that taught him how to manage public opinion and delegate tasks. FDR’s academic record consisted mostly of “gentleman’s C’s,” a common standard for wealthy students of the era. After Harvard, he enrolled at Columbia Law School. However, FDR found the meticulous study of law incredibly tedious. Once he passed the New York bar exam, he dropped out of Columbia without taking his degree. When you look at his presidency, you can see how his Harvard-honed charm and broad, generalist thinking proved far more valuable to him during the Great Depression and World War II than strict legal parsing ever could.
Decades later, John F. Kennedy followed a similar trajectory. JFK briefly enrolled at Princeton before a gastrointestinal illness forced him to withdraw. He later transferred to Harvard, where he initially spent more time socializing and pursuing athletics than studying. However, as the geopolitical situation in Europe deteriorated in the late 1930s, Kennedy found his intellectual focus. He poured his energy into his senior thesis, analyzing the British government’s failure to prepare for war with Germany. This thesis, later published as Why England Slept, became a bestseller and launched his public career. Kennedy’s administration later relied heavily on Ivy League academics, famously pulling scholars from Harvard to form what journalists called the “best and brightest” cabinet.
