Chatterbox

Harvard to Gore: Drop Dead

Despite Chatterbox’s spirited efforts on his behalf, Vice President Al Gore has been eliminated from consideration as the next president of Harvard. Guess those $25 checks Chatterbox writes to the alumni fund every December don’t do the trick! The bad news is reported this morning by Joshua Gewolb in the Harvard Crimson. The list of candidates has been winnowed down to about 30 or 40 names, and Gore’s isn’t among them. Neither is Bill Clinton’s, though Chatterbox always found that scenario a bit far-fetched. (Clinton never went to Harvard, and his lack of trustworthiness in the presence of young girls is a matter of public record.)

According to the Crimson, the finalists include Treasury Secretary Larry Summers; Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan; University of Michigan President Lee Bollinger; Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark; Harvard Provost Harvey Fineberg; and Harold Varmus, former chief of the National Institutes of Health and now CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Chatterbox is throwing his support to Varmus, who’s a Nobel laureate and a genuinely nice guy. Anyone who can handle a Republican Congress on the subject of stem cell research should find running Harvard a day at the beach.

As for that fellow who won a majority of the popular vote in the last presidential election, Chatterbox will keep his eye on the want ads.

[Correction, Jan. 8: Whoops, Gore didn’t win a majority of the popular vote. He won a plurality. Gore’s 50,994,082 votes exceeded Bush’s 50,461,080, but Ralph Nader’s 2,858,843 votes were enough to deny Gore a popular vote majority. You can view all the numbers by clicking here.]