Osler's Razor

It's the Saturday before Thanksgiving, which can only mean one thing-- the Harvard/Yale game! Can't you feel the excitement building? Huh? Can't you?

Of course you can't. Only .001% of the population cares even remotely about the Harvard/Yale game. And some of those who care are engaged only because it seems kind of repulsive-- the Nerd Bowl. People who are either big or fast, after all, go to real football schools. On top of that, you have the images of people in fur coats sipping port, or perhaps the ridiculous and nerdy stunts pulled by students.

All true. But still... this year there may be something more to consider. As David Brooks noted in his excellent column yesterday, after George Bush (Yale BA, Harvard MBA) leaves office, terrorist would be wise to strike during the Harvard/Yale game, given the make-up of the new administration:

Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), and Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law).

The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).

This group is, as Brooks puts it, "that slice of America that got double 800s on their SAT's." He means this in a good way, actually, and Brooks concludes that the group chosen for the Obama administration so far are open-minded, admired in their fields, non-ideological, creative, and (with the exception of Clinton) not excessively partisan.

I'm not as confident as Brooks. Smart people often do dumb things.

Still though... last night I turned on the television and happened to see Lawrence Lessig being interviewed on PBS. Lessig was a year ahead of me in law school, and we thought he was the smartest guy in the school. We were probably right, I realized, listening to him make sense last night. He didn't fall in a well or sing in his underwear to get famous-- he had some great ideas. He is famous for his intellect. That Yale Law nurtured that, and surrounded him with teachers and students who challenged him and admired his talents, nerdy as they might have been... that was a great thing, and we are all better off that Lessig and Obama, Clinton and Holder, Plimpton and Buckley, are or were prominent in our society.

What remains to be seen is if they can run a government.