Richard Nixon Vs. Cool

A short follow-up to Scott's musing on why 'uncool' kids don't just coordinate to redefine themselves as cool and outnumber the cool kids. A commenter surfaces (via Perlstein's Nixonland) that Richard Nixon did exactly this at Whittier College -- founding the 'Orthogonians' (strivers/commuters) against the swell 'Franklins,' a template for his later anti-elite 'silent majority' coalition. Mostly an extended, well-chosen quote plus Scott's framing.

Quality 60 · Strong. Solid/Strong-edge: an interesting, memorable connection (status-inversion as a viable political strategy, via the Nixon example), but slight and largely carried by the quoted Nixonland passage.

Claude’s paradigm shift 38 · Slight. Slight/Moderate-low: the insight (redefine the in-group to win the majority) is the commenter's/Perlstein's, not developed much further here.

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. Negligible/within-community: a brief status-dynamics note with no material footprint.