Appleton rests in the heart of the swing area of a swing state, which may be one of the reasons Mitt Romney chose to pay it a visit today. By making a campaign address at Lawrence University, Romney joins a long list of candidates—Democrats and Republicans—who’ve made whistle stops at our campus, including John Kerry, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy, and William Howard Taft.
In a piece that appeared in today’s Boston Globe, “Mitt Romney’s Wisconsin campaign swing takes him to ‘Harvard of the Midwest,” Globe staff writer, Glen Johnson, writes a letter to the candidate, opening with:
Dear Governor Romney:
We’ve traveled many miles together over the course of two presidential campaigns, though less this cycle than last.
Nonetheless, there’s one trip that would have been fun to make with you: your stop today at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.
It’s my alma mater, and we Lawrentians don’t get many chances to showcase our small-but-overachieving school to the rest of the country. Not that it doesn’t deserve it…
His article is as much a letter of instruction to Mitt Romney as it is a love letter to Lawrence, covering everything from famous LU alumni, to his favorite professors, to some of Lawrence football glory days. It’s a good, short read that encapsulates some of the magic of Lawrence.
While Lawrence University does not endorse presidential candidates, we wholeheartedly endorse the article.
(However, truth be told, we’ve always been under the impression that Harvard was the Lawrence of New England.)