Free An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek Page B

“as I can’t find my other one and consequently am hatless. Please send it as I am sending yours. . . . Harvard has not made me grasping but you are getting a certain carefree communistic attitude + a share the wealth attitude that is rather worrying to we who are wealthy.”
    His focus remained on the extracurricular and social activities he found more enjoyable, and stamped him as one of the many students at Harvard more interested in earning the social standing that attendance and graduation provided than in the book learning needed to advance a career. Although James Bryant Conant, Harvard’s president beginning in 1933, stressed the importance of “meritocracy,” a university focused more on the intellect and character of its students than on their social origins, social snobbery continued to dominate the undergraduate life of the university. Jack’s first two years on campus were a reflection of these mores. Football, swimming, and golf, and service on the Smoker and Annual Show committees occupied his freshman year, while junior varsity football, varsity swimming, the Spee and Yacht Clubs, and service on the business board of the Harvard
Crimson
filled his second year.
    Jack put a premium on succeeding at these chosen activities. He was a fierce competitor. “He played for keeps,” the football coach recalled. “He did nothing half way.” Swim practice often occupied four hours a day sandwiched between classes. The athletic competitions gave him some gratifying moments: the freshman swim team went undefeated, and an intercollegiate championship in sailing for the boat he commanded sophomore year was a high point.
    Yet, as at Choate, his brother continued to eclipse him. Joe Jr. was the best-known member of his class, and “Jack was bound to play second-fiddle,” a Harvard contemporary and later dean of admissions said. Whereas Joe was big enough and strong enough to play varsity football, Jack, at six feet and 150 pounds, was too slight to make more than the sophomore junior squad. Moreover, his fragile health undermined his success as a backstroke specialist, contributing to his failure to beat out a classmate for the starting assignment in the Yale swim meet.
    His brother’s success in campus politics also reduced any hopes Jack may have had of making a mark in that area. Under an unstated family rule of primogeniture, the eldest son had first call on a political career. And Joe Jr. left no doubt that this was already his life’s ambition. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, one of Joe’s tutors, remembered him as keenly interested in politics and public affairs and quick to cite his father as the source of his beliefs. “When I become President, I will take you up to the White House with me,” he liked to tell people. Joe’s quick rise to prominence on campus gave resonance to his boasts. He won elections as chairman of the Winthrop House committee, as a class representative to the student council, as an usher for Class Day, and as business manager of the class album. He also enjoyed prominence as an outspoken anti-interventionist in the emerging troubles abroad.
    Although very much in his brother’s shadow during his freshman and sophomore years, Jack also gave indications that he had more than a passing interest in public issues. A failed bid for a student council seat suggested that he was not content to leave politics entirely to his father and brother or that he was focused solely on high jinks. Moreover, his academic work began to demonstrate a substantial engagement with political leadership and how influential men changed the world. Economics, English, history, and government courses formed the core of his first two-year curriculum. In March 1937, his freshman adviser noted that Jack “is planning to do work in Gov. He has already spent time abroad studying it. His father is in that work.” He read several books on recent international and political history, and more revealing, he wrote