ohn F. Kennedy anticipated an early retirement, yoked by the 22d Amendment to two terms in office, destined to be an ex-president at 51. It was a frightening thought: Politically ripened before his time, he'd be too young to hunker down to the homestead like Eisenhower and Truman.
It was then that Kennedy's thoughts drifted to Harvard University, the school that gave him his intellectual credibility and social allure. After leading the free world, he mused to his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, he could lead the academic world.
Almost four decades later, Bill Clinton is pondering an early, unwanted ex-presidency as a less majestic figure in an admittedly less majestic age.
And, in a fateful confluence of events, Harvard is commencing a wide-open search for a new president, a job that usually only opens up every decade or two.
At first blush, the image seems all wrong: Clinton, all Bubba and baggage, in the crimson gowns of an institution that rivals the Vatican for pomp and veiled intrigue.
But it's an idea that, like a well-crafted piece of legislation, could serve both parties well - and serve some larger purposes as well.
For Clinton, it would present a new challenge, so vital to harnessing his restless energies. Without such a stimulant, even his supporters can envision a Dantesque descent into tabloid hell, in which an aging and portly former president gets hounded through a series of embarrassing personal degradations.
Clinton, whose level of introspection is unusual for a politician, gave voice to his fears of a lonely retirement during a meeting with religious leaders last month in Illinois.
''What I will miss more than anything is the job,'' the president said. ''I loved the job. I love it every day. My biggest problem now is that I hate to go to sleep at night. I want to - you know, I go to bed and I sit there reading for hours. I just keep working. I'm trying to do everything I can before I leave. I have loved the work.''
He added later, ''And the other thing that I'll really miss is the opportunity, on a regular and consistent basis, to come in contact with every conceivable kind of being. I hope that I can find something to do when I leave office which will at least keep me in contact with different kinds of people who have different interests and know different things, from whom I can continue to learn and for whom I can continue to contribute.''
But where to find them? The usual paths for former presidents don't suit Clinton. He's unlikely to hole up and write book after book like Richard Nixon, even if he develops a Nixon-like desire to wash away his sins in a mad volley of spin. Financially, he may have cut a deal with a McDougal or two, but it's hard to believe Clinton would get much satisfaction from fattening his bank account by giving paid speeches and serving on corporate boards, like Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter's tool belt is an odd fit, as well.
Harvard would whet his every appetite. And the university needs him, too.
It's almost axiomatic that, to achieve an education, academic studies must be leavened with a dose of practicality. Harvard remains, in most eyes, America's preeminent university, but many inside and outside its walls believe its undergraduate program lacks sufficient shape and cohesion.
With its monumental endowment and nonstop succession of billion-dollar fund drives, Harvard grows programs on top of programs. Subjects like human rights get spread around among rival departments, schools, and institutions. The university's proponents, including Provost Harvey Fineberg, describe it like a giant buffet table, with bountiful treats for the choosing.
But not all students are capable of nourishing themselves.
Neil Rudenstine made it his mission upon taking up the presidency nine years ago to bring more order to undergraduate education. But his path inevitably touched on the defiant fiefdoms of many deans, who have broad powers under Harvard's diffuse governing structure. In some eyes, Rudenstine made progress. But in the wake of his resignation last spring, he's been praised more for achieving prosperity than unity.
Clinton is uniquely positioned to tether Harvard to the real world. He's famously at home in the realm of ideas. He's also famous for never once forgetting the price of milk.
As a fund-raiser, he'd have no peer. And the most imperious deans would inevitably submit to his charms and manipulations.
Born poor, Clinton is also a living role model for the kind of transformation that universities can help bring about. As the journalist Nicholas Lemann has pointed out, in the 1960s, around the time that Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush was arriving at Yale, the Ivy League was undergoing change. People like Bush, buoyed by prep schools and family legacies, were suddenly in the minority. While the elite universities had always made room for academic achievers of different backgrounds, those students were never part of the dominant culture. By the late '60s and early '70s, a new meritocracy was rising, and, in the process, rescuing the Ivy League from the fate of outmoded social clubs everywhere.
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, students at Yale Law School, were avatars of the new meritocracy. And as such, they stand at the intersection of thought and deed; they represent academic power merged with middle-class bustle.
For Harvard, especially in the oddly atavistic class mind-set of Boston, elitism is still the wolf at the door. Without an ongoing push to modernize and diversify, top-notch universities run the risk of obsolescence: Strivers could always decide to get their schooling elsewhere. The new economy, so hostile to other hierarchies, has been quite friendly to the traditional academic powerhouses; but the new economy remains fluid, dangerous.
Harvard would be well guided by Bill Clinton.
Still, there is no evidence that he is even under consideration by the presidential search committee formed recently by the Harvard Corporation.
''I haven't heard anything about Bill Clinton being a candidate but that doesn't preclude anything,'' said Harvard spokeswoman Rebecca Rollins. ''Harvard Corporation is sitting down and thinking about the type of qualities they're looking for. I have no idea if they've even interviewed anyone.''
In fact, the chair of the search committee, Robert G. Stone Jr., did describe the qualities the committee seeks in a letter to the university community. And they were decidedly Clintonesque: ''We will, of course, be seeking a person of high intellectual distinction, with proven qualities of leadership, a devotion to excellence in education and research, a capacity to guide a complex institution through a time of significant change, and a dedication to the ideals and values vital to a community of learning.''
For some, of course, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, with its lingering threat of a post-presidency indictment, renders Clinton ineligible.
''Personally I can't imagine it,'' offered Sheldon Stern, the recently retired historian at the John F. Kennedy Library. ''It would be a very controversial move. If not for the scandal, then sure. But I think that erases everything.''
But wait. The job of university president these days bears little resemblance to a scoutmaster. And wasn't it Harvard professors who took the lead in insisting the Clinton had committed no legal offense? Law professor Charles Ogletree represented defendants before special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr. Alan Dershowitz wrote a book decrying ''Moral McCarthyism.''
This, too, is the university that responded to news that its Divinity School dean was stockpiling pornography on his office computer by expressing outrage not over the offense, but over the investigation. Free speech, not morality, was at issue for much of the faculty.
Few would disagree that Clinton would be at home in such an environment. Few would disagree that Clinton, with his still-febrile ambitions, would accept the job with relish.
Would Harvard dare to make the offer?
