I already posted a comment to David's post below to the news story on the Summers no-confidence vote outcome. After reading John Hinderaker's comment that "Summers is liberal, but not, apparently, liberal enough," I remembered this thought, sparked by the Paul Krugman/Joe Klein face-off on "Meet the Press."°

We've heard all sorts of reasons for the antipathy between President Summers and the Harvard faculty: particular policy issues (divestiture, tighter academic standards), general political views (liberal vs. far-left), clashes of personal style. Here's a possible contributing element: post-Clinton backlash. Think about the expectations that Harvard faculty members must have had when President Clinton was elected. Liberal, Rhodes Scholar, policy wonk. When reelected, he became the first twice-elected Democratic president since FDR, right? And that big-government health care plan with pages of academic detail wrapped around socialist ideals. And think about the letdown. Six years of triangulation, after 1994. Incremental policy initiatives. Treaties like Kyoto and ICC signed, sure, but submitted for ratification? Even after the left rallied to save him from his weaknesses, again and again. I just wonder whether, in addition to the aforementioned reasons, Larry Summers hasn't been caught in an anti-Clinton (Bill) backlash. Summers has the close association with the most moderate parts of the Clinton years, and he's a target that's well within reach.

Yes, it's a bit of a stretch. But perhaps it explains why Summers' critics seem to have the sort of venom we've only usually seen when President Bush and Judge Starr are mentioned.

In the post I linked above, Hinderaker also writes that "[o]f the educational institutions with which I have been associated, the one for which I have the least affection is Harvard." I'll go one step better: I'm willing to say that there's no school (in the United States) to which I've dedicated an hour's thought for which I have less affection. President Summers has his work cut out for him if he hopes to move the university to the point where I might think about making a donation.


°For those who missed it, here's the relevant part:

Krugman: I dread the prospect of a Clinton run just because I think that would be--it would be an attempt to recreate the politics of the '90s when you had Bill Clinton, who was a president who managed to sort of triangulate. And I think we ought to have an election that's really about what what kind of country we're going to be and we won't have that if it's Hillary Clinton running.

Klein: Paul, I have a question for you: What was it about the peace and prosperity of the eight years of the Clinton administration that you didn't like?

Update: David Bernstein, meanwhile, thinks this was a vote against President Bush:

The far left at Harvard is extremely frustrated with political trends in the U.S. Their votes and activism against Bush were not only completely ineffectual, but they don't even have a Democratic governor in one of the most liberal states in the country. So they pick on the closest thing Harvard has to a powerful right-winger: moderate Democrat and university president Larry Summers, who becomes a stand-in for all evil conservative white men, from Bush on down.

Maybe. His theory certainly has the virtue of explaining why the vote against Summers was much stronger than people expected - over 50%, rather than just 1/3 or so. I'm willing to attribute the unexpected boost to anti-Bush feelings. But even in 2004 and earlier, when almost everyone on the faculty believed that a.)President Bush was "never elected", and b.)that he would be defeated in 2004, that 1/3 or so already exhibited intense animosity towards Summers.