When David Axelrod Had Hair. Long Hair.

This Buzzfeed Politics gallery of “69 Politicians As They Were In High School” includes several figures with local connections.

4. Former Senator Rick “The Rooster” Santorum: Santorum graduated from Mundelein’s Carmel High School in 1976, although he earned the nickname “The Rooster” as a schoolboy in Pennsylvania, for his cowlick and his outspoken political opinions.

9. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Clinton, then Hillary Rodham, is a 1965 graduate of Maine South High School in Park Ridge, where she was a Young Republican and that prissy girl who always did her homework.

19. Obama Campaign Advisor David Axelrod: Axelrod, who has the longest hair of anyone in this gallery, male or female, graduated from Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School in 1972.

24. First Lady Michelle Obama: Michelle Robinson was salutatorian of Whitney Young High School’s Class of 1982.

31. Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh: Walsh was president of Barrington High School’s Class of 1980.

41. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich: Blagojevich graduated from Foreman High School in 1974, after transferring from Lane Tech.

60. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: Rummy was a big-shot wrestler, and football player and Eagle Scout at New Trier High School, from which he graduated in 1950.

Buy this book! Ward Room blogger Edward McClelland's book, Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President , is available Amazon. Young Mr. Obama includes reporting on President Obama's earliest days in the Windy City, covering how a presumptuous young man transformed himself into presidential material. Buy it now!

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