Last night I quoted the following passage from a piece subheaded “More nonsense about Europe and America,” by the snooty lads at The Economist:
For all Europe’s Obamamania Mr Obama is, in fact, one of the least European-minded of American presidents. JFK studied at the London School of Economics with Harold Laski, a leading British socialist. Bill Clinton went to Oxford University and surrounded himself with Rhodes scholars who liked to discuss the German educational model. John Kerry was famously not just French-speaking but also “French-looking”.
As a gazillion readers point out, John Kerry was not president.
As our pal Noemie Emery notes:
JFK never studied at the London School of Economics, with or without Harold Laski.
That was his big brother Joe.
True. Jack Kennedy sailed for England in the summer of 1935 and enrolled at the LSE, but was stricken with jaundice and returned to the U.S. without (according to Laski’s widow) ever attending any classes.
Still, Bill Clinton did go to Oxford and it’s not hard to imagine him taking an interest in the German model. So one out of three ain’t bad.
(By the way, if a youthful connection to Britain is the standard for being a “European-minded president,” let’s not forget Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, and Jackson were all sons of British subjects — just like Barack Obama.)